Development strategy for ultra-low power consumption

Today, energy saving is becoming increasingly crucial, both for ecological reasons and due to the omnipresence of portable devices. Current legal standards therefore impose consumption limits in standby mode for televisions, gaming consoles, and other household appliances. Meanwhile, consumers hope that the era of mobile devices with several days of battery life will one day be revived.

These two perspectives — legal and practical — may seem entirely different, since in the first case we are talking about devices in standby, while in the second, the mobile device must remain connected to the wider world and therefore requires greater resources. Nevertheless, it is possible to optimise the power consumption of both worlds through means that FiveCo's engineers know well and apply daily in the industrial field.

For electrical devices in standby, the European Union has set a standard imposing a maximum consumption of 0.5 to 1 Watt (European Regulation 1275/2008 of 7 January 2013). This objective may seem impressive compared to devices available in the early 2000s — for which standby consumption of 10 to 20 Watts was not uncommon — but it sits well above the performance achievable today. Indeed, using modern techniques and components, FiveCo's engineers have for example succeeded in reducing the standby consumption of electric motor control systems to values 2 million times lower, around 250 nano Watts. It is therefore clear that European standards remain very lenient towards manufacturers.

For mobile devices, progress can also be made and will certainly happen once consumers grow tired of charging their devices every evening — which is likely to occur rapidly given the proliferation of such devices in daily life and the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT).

The question is therefore: "How can such low consumption be achieved?" This objective can be reached through three main approaches:

• Judicious selection of the electronic components essential in standby, choosing them on strict energy criteria.
• Complete deactivation of power-hungry components that are not strictly necessary in standby.
• Conscious programming of embedded code with the energy objective always in mind. Use of low-level programming for the critical sections where every instruction counts.

All three approaches are very important, with the third requiring the most expertise from experienced engineers who are well-versed in this challenge — such as the FiveCo team.

3 axes for achieving optimised consumption: each is important, and if any one of them is neglected, the pyramid collapses. (Diagram layers, from base to top: Component selection — Electronic design — Firmware)

Taking the example of connected watches, manufacturers' marketing regularly speaks of increasing battery capacity, as though this point alone would revolutionise the autonomy of these objects. Yet looking at these figures over 10 years, we do see an increase in capacity, but within a very limited order of magnitude (less than 100%). This implies that it is not through batteries that we will recover the 10 days of autonomy that was the norm before smartphones appeared, but through conscious design of the system as a whole.

For simpler devices requiring fewer computing resources — such as implantable medical devices or IoT connected objects — mastering consumption from the earliest design phases is all the more crucial. Questions such as "what is the leakage current of each of my components?", "which components are essential in standby?", and "which tasks need to be optimised at firmware level?" are essential in this process.

In conclusion, companies that take these questions seriously in the coming years will have a head start over their competitors and will ensure the longevity of their products on the market. FiveCo is already at their side to help them innovate.