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Abstract
1 Introduction
As the need for mobile computation and communication
increases, there is a strong demand for design of Hardware/Software (HW/SW) Embedded Systems for mobile applications. Maximizing the amount of energy that can be delivered by the battery, and hence the battery life, is one of the
most important design considerations for a mobile embedded
system, since it directly impacts the extent and duration of the
systems mobility. To enable exploration of alternative implementations for a mobile system, it is critical to develop fast
and accurate battery life estimation techniques for embedded
systems. In this paper, we focus on developing such a battery
model, and provide a framework for battery-life estimation of
HW/SW embedded systems.
Previous research on low power design techniques [1, 2],
tries to minimize average power consumption either by reducing the average current drawn by a circuit keeping the
supply voltage fixed or by scaling the supply voltage statically or dynamically. However, as shown in this paper, designing to minimize average power consumption does not
necessarily lead to optimum battery lifetime. Additionally,
the above techniques assume that the battery subsystem is an
This work was supported by NEC USA Inc., and by the California Micro
Program
C in mA
PACKET
QUEUE
IP
CHECK
C in mA
T in ms
IP_CHK
CHKSUM
(SW)
Arb I/F
(HW)
Arb I/F
(HW)
Arb I/F
CHECKSUM
Packet
Arrivals
SPARC
T in ms
C in mA
CREATE
PACKET
C in mA
tasks
Packet
Processing
T in ms
Arbiter
(HW)
Single Port
memory
Average
Curr. (mA)
123.8
124.2
Battery
Life (ms)
357053
536484
Del. Spec.
Energy (Wh/Kg)
15.12
18.58
Packets
Processed
119018
178828
3 Battery Background
A battery cell consists of an anode, a cathode, and electrolyte
that separates the two electrodes and allows transfer of electrons as ions between them. During discharge, oxidation of
the anode (Li for LiIon battery) produces charged ions (Li ),
which travel through the electrolyte and undergo reduction at
the cathode. The reaction sites (parts of the cathode where reductions have occurred) become inactive for future discharge
because of the formation of an inactive compound. Rate Capacity Effect (dependency of energy delivered by a battery
on magnitude of discharge current) and Recovery Effect (recovery of charged ions near cathode) are two important phenomena that affect the delivered energy and the lifetime of a
battery. A short description of the physical phenomena responsible for these effects follows.
The lifetime of a cell depends on the availability and reachability of active reaction sites in the cathode. When discharge
current is low, the inactive sites (made inactive by previous
cathode reactions) are distributed uniformly throughout the
cathode. But, at higher discharge current, reductions occur at
the outer surface of the cathode making the inner active sites
inaccessible. Hence, the energy delivered (or the battery lifetime) decreases since many active sites in the cathode remain
un-utilized when the battery is declared discharged.
Besides non-availability of active reaction sites in the cathode during discharge, the non-availability of charged ions
(lithium ions for lithium insertion cell) can also be a factor determining the amount of energy that can be delivered by a battery [11]. Concentration of the active species (charged ions
i.e. Li ) is uniform at electrode-electrolyte interface at zero
current. During discharge, the active species are consumed
at the cathode-electrolyte interface, and replaced by new active species that move from electrolyte solution to cathode
through diffusion. However, as the intensity of the current increases, the concentration of active species decreases at the
cathode and increases at the anode and the diffusion phenomenon is unable to compensate for the depletion of active
materials near the cathode. As a result, the concentration of
active species reduces near the cathode decreasing the cell
voltage. However, if the cell is allowed to idle in between
discharges, concentration gradient decreases because of diffusion, and charge recovery takes place at the electrode. As
a result, the energy delivered by the cell, and hence the lifetime, increases. Summarizing, the amount of energy that can
be delivered from a cell and the lifetime of a cell, depend on
the value of the discharge current and the idle times in the
discharge demand. In the next subsection, we define some
notations which will be used in the rest of the paper.
3.1
4 Battery Models
The fine-grained electro-chemical phenomena underlying the
cell discharge are represented by the accurate model, based
on PDE (Partial Differential Equations) [14], which involve
a large number of parameters depending on the type of cell.
The set of results that can be derived through the PDE model
is limited since as the discharge current and the cut-off potential decrease, the computation time becomes exceedingly
large. Hence, the accurate PDE model cannot be used for
system-level exploration of a mobile embedded system. In
the following section, we present a more tractable parametric
model that captures the essence of the recovery mechanism.
Let us consider a single cell and track the stochastic evolution of the cell from the fully charged state to the completely
discharged state. We define the smallest amount of capacity
that may be discharged as a charge unit. Each fully charged
cell is assumed to have a maximum available capacity of T
charge units, and a nominal capacity of N charge units. The
nominal capacity, N, is much less than T in practice and represents the charge that could be extracted using a constant
discharge profile. Both N and T vary for different kinds of
cells and values of discharge current.
p j
f
q 0 e gN N j
q0 e
gN N j
gC f
gC f d f
0
1 fmax
f
(1)
where gN and gC are parameters that depend on the recovery capability of the battery, and q0 is the probability of an
idle slot. In particular, a small value of gN represents a high
cell conductivity (i.e., a great recovery capability of the cell),
while a large gN corresponds to a high internal resistance,
(i.e., a steep discharge curve for the cell). The value of gC
is related to the cell potential drop during the discharge proWe represent the cell behavior as a discrete time transient cess, and therefore, to the discharge current. Given the recovstochastic process, that tracks the cell state of charge. Fig- ery probability, the probability to remain in the same state of
ure 4 shows a graphical representation of the process. At charge in an idle time while being in phase f is
each time unit, the state of charge decreases from state i to
q0 p j
f
j=1,. . . ,N 1
r j
f
the state i n if n charge units are demanded from the battery.
rN
f
q0
(2)
Otherwise, if no charge units are demanded, the battery may
recover from its current state of charge (i) to a higher state
We assume that gN is a constant, whereas gC is a piecewise
(greater than i). The stochastic process starts from the state
constant
function of the number of charge units already drawn
of full charge (V VOC ), denoted by N, and terminates when
off
the
cell,
that changes value in correspondence with d f
the absorbing state 0 (V Vcut ) is reached, or the maximum
(
f
1
f
). We have d0 =0 and d fmax 1 T , while for
max
available capacity T is exhausted. In case of constant cur
d
(
f
1
f
) proper values are chosen according to the
f
max
rent discharge, N successive charge units are drained and the
cell state goes from N to 0 in a time period equal to N time configuration of the battery.
One simulation step of the battery cell assuming the input
units. By allowing idle periods in between discharges, the
discharge
demand as Bernoulli arrival is shown in Figure 5.
battery can partially recover its charge during the idle times,
and thus we can drain a number of charge units greater than
Simulation Step
N before reaching the state 0.
r (f)
r1 (f)
p (f)
p1(f)
qi
i=1
qi
i=2
q1
q2
rN(f)
N-1
p (f)
N-2
. . .
qi
i=N
. . .
q2
q1
N-1
N-1
q1
q2
inputs:
Current State,Recovery Probability[],
Discharge Rate
outputs: Next State
begin
Generate a random number R between 0 and 1;
If (R Discharge Rate) then
Next State := Current State - 1;
else if ( R Recovery Probability[Current State]) then
Next State := Current State + 1;
end if
end
stant discharge, and T equal to the number of impulses obtained through the PDE model when q 0 1.
Figure 6 presents the behavior of the delivered capacity
normalized to the nominal capacity versus the discharge rate
(q) at which the current impulses are drained for three values of current density: I=90, 100, and 110 A/m2 . It can be
seen that the curves obtained from the PDE and the stochastic
models match closely.
15
I= 90A/m2 - s
2
I= 90A/m - e
2
I=100A/m2 - s
I=100A/m 2 - e
I=110A/m2 - s
I=110A/m - e
13
11
9
7
5
3
1
0.2
Figure 6:
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
discharge rate
0.7
0.8
0.9
SYS1
Arrivals
SYS2
Processing
Processing
T in ms
(b)
(e)
(c)
C in mA
C in mA
(a)
C in mA
Processing
SYS3
Arrivals
Arrivals
T in ms
(d)
T in ms
(f)
Table 3: Estimation of Battery Life and Delivered Energy Using Stochastic Model
System
SYS1
SYS2
SYS3
Recovery Effect
Delivered
Spec. Energy
Life Time
(Wh/Kg)
(ms)
13.357
163650
15.553
280543
32.924
1115616
STOC
16785
67717
153817
Life Time
(ms)
PDE
17264
65723
154956
%Err
2.85
2.94
1.00
Computation
Time
STOC
PDE
18.62 sec
1 Day
19.52 sec
1 Day
40.35 sec
2 Days
References