A 16-channel synchronous sampling power measurement system for wireless health assistance devices

A multi-channel synchronous sampling hardware for power measurement applications is described. Future body-worn medical devices for ambient assisted living should allow for battery run-times of several days without any user interaction for charging. In order to achieve this very challenging goal, a first step is the characterization of the components within medical devices by their power consumption or charging power in order to create models of power consumption over time. Medical devices often include several sensors and wireless interfaces which are known to be the most power consuming. This paper describes a hardware that is used as a tool for the measurement of power consumption of specific peripherals on a medical ambient assisted living device during development. Thus a model can be derived that can help optimizing battery run-time by deciding when to use which interface for data transmission or sensor data acquisition. Furthermore, the tool can quantify the amount of energy gained from an energy harvester. By assessing power drained from battery and power harvested the battery status over time can be studied and charging intervals derived.