Power Management in Mobile Devices

Sealed Lead Acid. Nickel Cadmium. Lithium Ion. How do you balance battery life with performance and cost? This book shows you how! Now that 'mobile' has become the standard, the consumer not only expects mobility but demands power longevity in wireless devices. As more and more features, computing power, and memory are packed into mobile devices such as iPods, cell phones, and cameras, there is a large and growing gap between what devices can do and the amount of energy engineers can deliver. In fact, the main limiting factor in many portable designs is not hardware or software, but instead how much power can be delivered to the device. This book describes various design approaches to reduce the amount of power a circuit consumes and techniques to effectively manage the available power. It includes power management advice on: low power packaging techniques; power and clock gating; energy efficient compilers; various display technologies; linear versus switched regulators; and software techniques and intelligent algorithms. It addresses power versus performance that each newly developed mobile device faces. Robust case studies drawn from the author's 30 plus years of extensive real world experience are included. Both hardware and software are discussed concerning their roles in power.