Wireless Sensors are experiencing rapid growth in a wide range of applications: RFID to GPS tracking, traditional automatic metering applications (AMR) plus advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), data loggers, aerospace/military are just few of the markets to name. Satisfying the power-hungry demands of these devices requires the careful choice of a power management system – a decision that takes on added importance if the device is intended for long-term use in an extreme environment and/or a hard-to-access location.
Not only does the battery need to be light and small enough to fit into compact designs, it also should be safe through the life of the application. Another crucial point for the battery is to be able to operate in a wide range of temperatures (for both indoor and outdoor usages) while offering a stable output voltage throughout the application’s lifetime.
Doing a lifetime calculation on lithium primary cells are difficult, especially when there are variables in the temperature and usage conditions. Therefore it is imperative that the design engineers demand for verifiable information from battery manufacturers in order to avoid mistakes while doing the lifetime calculations as a miscalculation could cost the company 10 times the initial costs in battery replacements.