TI Expands Battery Fuel Guide Family for Smartphones

Texas Instruments (TI) has introduced two new battery fuel gauge devices with integrated low-dropout regulators (LDOs) for mobile phones. The new system-side and battery pack-side fuel gauges build on TI's existing family of integrated circuits (ICs) that predict battery life with 99-percent accuracy to extend run-time, protect data and provide a better user experience.

The bq27510 system-side battery fuel gauge with Impedance Track technology incorporates a LDO and can be powered directly from the battery cell with less external circuitry, regardless of system voltage. In addition to simplifying design of the fuel gauge into the host system, it accurately measures remaining capacity data from a device's single-cell Li-Ion battery to predict remaining battery capacity under all conditions, even as a battery ages.

In addition to the system-side battery fuel gauges, TI's new bq27540 device resides directly on the embedded or removable battery pack to intelligently manage available power that resides in the battery. The bq27540 will support SDQ, HDQ and I2C communication protocols to allow the system to read important information from the battery.

Accurate battery data helps systems optimize power better

Accurate fuel gauging helps systems intelligently manage available power, alert the user of system operating-time, and extend the run-time of the system as far as possible. Mobile application processors, such as TI's OMAP 3 platform with SmartReflex power and performance technologies, rely on accurate battery data to better optimize the mobile device's complete power operating system. As with the bq27500, the bq27510 and bq27540 provide an accurate reserve energy warning, which allows a system to save data to non-volatile memory before the system shuts down, so work is not lost when a battery runs to empty.

Posted to the site on 30th January 2008