Battery Monitor for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks promise to become one of the most pervasive technologies in the next years. From Smart Cities to industrial safety and human health, from energy to environmental control, the potential of smart networks seems unlimited less until now. Some important features that a pervasive technology like that must have concern its impact on the environment where the installation is made, how easy installation is and the compatibility with existing technologies. All these factors lead to realize when possible, a network in which all devices from nodes (or routers) to end devices (or peripheral devices) are battery supplied and are as small as possible. In such a network, the batteries, the power management and the energy consumption monitoring, play a very important role like the network functionality itself. In this work we present a micropower MCU based battery monitor using a Coulomb to pulse frequency converter. As a result, we will show that this solution can be well suited in low power applications, like wireless devices where low power consumption and wide dynamic range are important characters.