Energy Management and Micro Energy Technology

Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits

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Power Management

High integrated voltage regulators

Block diagram of a power management system. 
Block diagram of a power management system.

In nearly all rechargeable batteries the voltage decreases with discharge as a function of the chemistry and the discharge current. However, electronic circuits and systems are designed for a fixed supply voltage. Most often the circuit parameters change with varying supply rails. One important parameter of circuits for mobile terminals is the current consumption which is also very sensitive to the supply voltage.
In digital circuits the power consumption increases with the square of the supply voltage. The relation between supply voltage and power consumption for analogue circuits depends on functionality and circuit techniques. For this reason voltage regulators are used to generate a constant supply voltage from the decreasing battery voltage.
We design highly integrated voltage regulators for all kinds of applications. These circuits can be used as modules on a larger chip or as discrete devices on a printed circuit board.

Special features of our regulators are:

  • fast transient response,
  • additional enable pins and
  • small external components such as capacitors.
Due to their extremely short transient times the regulator blocks can activate all circuit blocks, thereby significantly decreasing the standby current.

Power Management Systems

Complete power management systems are used for mobile terminals to

  • decrease power consumption and
  • prolong standby and operating times.
Such systems consist of several adjustable voltage regulators and a microprocessor to control the different voltages of the device. The microprocessor retrieves information from the device on how to control the supply voltages of the various submodules so that they consume as little power as possible.
We develop complete multifunctional systems utilizing our own or commercial ICs for the power management of different types of terminal devices. We hold several patents for special algorithms and architectures for power management control.

Power optimization in mobile terminals

Block diagram of a mobile phone. 
Block diagram of a mobile phone.

Through selection of high-efficiency regulators, reorganization of the supply rails and changing of the values of the supply voltages, the overall consumption of nearly any device can be reduced significantly.
We carry out power optimization for all kinds of mobile terminal devices to achieve the lowest power consumption possible.