Microcontroller power consumption measurement based on PSoC

Microcontrollers are often used as central processing elements in embedded systems. Because of different sleep and performance modes that microcontrollers support, their current consumption may have high dynamic range, over 100 dB. In this paper, a data acquisition card (DAQ) based on system on chip PSoC5 LP for measuring and analyzing power consumption of microcontrollers is presented. Both Successive Approximation Register (SAR) and Delta-Sigma (DS) ADCs present in PSoC5 LP are used. SAR ADC samples data at 10x higher rate that DS ADC, so input range of DS ADC can be adjusted based on data measured by SAR ADC, thus enabling the extension of the measuring range of current consumption by 28%. Implemented DAQ card is connected to computer over USB. For the analysis, storage and visualization of measured data Python PC application is created.