3 Ways How Embedded Systems can Consume Less Power

By Embedded Advisor | Monday, April 27, 2020

The rising energy demands make low power consumption the ultimate agenda for embedded system designers.

FREMONT, CA: When energy comes at a premium, ensuring that an embedded system consumes less energy is even essential. Designing power-efficient applications provide lesser overheads to managing thermal dissipation and controlling heat generation at the source by optimizing the power consumed. Given these advantages, embedded system engineers can no longer ignore the idea of designing systems that operate at low power. Here is what embedded system designers can do to optimize power consumption.

• Enabling Deep-Sleep Mode

In deep-sleep mode, microcontrollers often consume less power. An approach to prevent the microcontroller from drawing high amounts of power is to put it into a deep-sleep mode when it is idle. In this way, embedded systems can achieve their sustainability goals better.

• Using a Switching Regulator

A huge amount of power from embedded system operations is dissipated in the form of heat, which is mostly not considered for any application. When the system is running on a battery, the heat dissipation results in the use of extra current. Less heat dissipation translates into increased battery durability. Thus, system engineers can use switching regulators. While switching regulators increase the overall cost, they also reduce power consumption.

• Turning Off Unused Components

While putting the microcontroller into deep-sleep mode is a brilliant tactic for reducing power consumption, other components like ICs can still drain significant power. This issue can be minimized by integrating the PCB with a single voltage regulator that can separately power the microcontroller and other components. This allows the microcontroller to turn off the power of other components before switching to deep-sleep mode.