Energy efficient battery management

A challenging aspect of mobile communications consists of exploring ways in which the available run time of the terminals can be maximized. In this paper we investigate battery management techniques that can dramatically improve the energy efficiency of radio communication devices. We consider an array of electrochemical cells connected in parallel. Through simple scheduling algorithms the discharge from each cell is properly shaped to optimize the charge recovery mechanism, without introducing any additional delay in supplying the required power. Then, a traffic management scheme, that exploits the knowledge of the cells´ state of charge, is implemented to achieve a further improvement in the battery performance. In this case, the discharge demand may be delayed. Results indicate that the proposed battery management techniques improve system performance no matter which parameter values are chosen to characterize the cell behavior