Electrical engineering design

A few of the most important tasks in electrical engineering and electronics design are to select the components that will perform the desired functions. An important part of a good user experience is sufficient operating time. Power consumption calculations are essential information when selecting a battery that meets the operating time requirements. 

Having hardware experts who have a successful track record from challenging development projects such as building new mobile phone hardware architecture for production volumes of +100M units makes it easy to take challenges that are too big for most competitors to even consider.

Architecture design, block diagrams, power budget calculation, and key building block selection are typical first steps to take. Often, there are close match reference designs (made for a similar device with a similar use case) that may accelerate the total hardware development time drastically.

The secret of making small wearable devices with long-lasting battery life goes as follows:

You start with the use case definition and understanding. Then comes hardware design optimization e.g., sleep/wake-up logic, component value optimization, and careful testing and design validation. What follows is close co-operation with the firmware team to find every detail that consumes power and can be turned off in FW e.g., un-used AD converters of MCU. Here, it’s all about working together, not working in silos! The final stage includes state-of-the-art labs and logging/measurement equipment capable of detecting nano-A level changes in power consumption.

Close relationships with many technology providers also play an important role when pushing the limits of what is doable and what is doable for the second generation of devices as embedded technology develops fast. After all, functions that required three components earlier, may require just one only 18 months later.