A Model for Battery Pulsed Discharge with Recovery Effect

Carla F. Chiasserini
Dipartimento di Elettronica Politecnico di Torino C.so Duca degli Abruzzi, 24 10129 Torino - Italy

Ramesh R. Rao
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, 0407 University of California at San Diego 9500 Gilman Drive La Jolla, CA 92093-0407
Abstract - This paper introduces a stochastic model of battery behavior, that emulates electrochemical mechanisms that are key to battery performance under pulsed discharge conditions. A pulsed discharge allows charge recovery during the idle periods. Recovery depends on the state of charge of the battery and on the duration of the rest time period. Using the postulated model, we derive the improvement to battery lifetime that results from pulsed current discharge driven by bursty stochastic transmissions. The results emphasize the role of trafc shaping in the quest to enhance battery behavior.

I. I NTRODUCTION One of the challenging issues in wireless communications is energy consumption management. In order to support users mobility, it is necessary to make available light and reliable batterypowered apparatus. Since the advances in battery technology are much slower than the market evolution, effective solutions to extend battery lifetime at reasonable cost are still needed. Two ndings suggest that there can be room to dramatically improve the performance of communication devices. On one hand, several papers [1], [2], [3], [4], [5] have shown that battery efciency can be improved by using a pulsed current discharge instead of a constant current discharge due to the charge recovery process that takes place in the battery during the idle time periods, called rest time. On the other hand, the major amount of current drained from the battery is consumed to supply the power amplier during packet transmissions. Our idea is to exploit the benets of the pulsed discharge in conjunction with the burstiness that often characterizes the trafc sources. In [6] a summary of the major results regarding the battery capacity and the electrochemical mechanisms that effect the discharge process is presented. Batteries store chemically active materials and deliver energy through electrochemical reactions. When a current is drawn off the battery, two concurrent phenomena occur: i) the concentration of the active materials around

the electrode drops (polarization effect); ii) the active materials move toward the depletion region due to the diffusion mechanism and reduce the concentrations gradient. As the current is drained, the polarization effect overcomes the diffusion process leading to the battery discharge before the active materials are exhausted. This battery discharge is faster when the drained current is high. However, if the current is interrupted, the polarization effect can be overcome and the battery may recover some of its charge. Fig. 1 shows the voltage behavior of a lead acid battery when impulses of current are drawn off [1]. As it can be clearly seen, the battery is able to recover the initial value of voltage during the rest time periods. However, the recovery process depends on the idle time duration and on the state of charge of the battery; in particular, as the battery is discharged, the recovery effect decreases until all the active materials are consumed, i.e., the theoretical capacity of the battery is exhausted. In the experiment shown in Fig. 1, a slight reduction of the battery voltage can be already observed after four current impulses were drained. In [6] is proposed a simple model of the battery behavior during the discharge process, that considers the recovery mechanism depending on the rest time duration only. Here, a more accurate battery model is developed taking into account the degradation of the recovery capability of the battery as the battery state of charge decreases. The advantages of the pulsed discharge with respect to the constant discharge are derived through the analysis of the presented model. Then, a simple trafc shaping technique is applied showing that discharge shaping can be a determinant of the battery efciency. II. T HE BATTERY M ODEL We consider the theoretical capacity of the battery as the maximum number of packets that the battery is able to deliver for a given value of current. Assuming that the amount of capacity necessary to transmit a packet is one charge unit, we set the theoretical capacity equal to charge units and we set the initial value of charge of the battery to charge units. is also assumed to be the number of charge units that can be drained from the battery under constant discharge.

On leave at the Center for Wireless Communications, La Jolla, CA.

r1 p1 pN-2

r N-1 pN-1

rN

. . .

N-1

Fig. 2. Markov chain representing the battery behavior.

otherwise the battery may recover one charge unit or remain in the same state. The recovery effect is represented as a decreasing exponential function of the state of charge of the battery. Such a model was used in [7], where the behavior of the state of charge of lead-acid batteries was studied. The recovery probability at state is as follows

where is a parameter that depends on the battery technology characteristics: as smaller , as greater the recovery capability is. The value of has to be chosen accordingly to the internal battery resistance and the value of current drawn off the battery. Note that in [6], is considered a constant value for all , that is the degradation of the battery recovery capability is neglected. The probability to remain in the same state of charge is

As a measure of the battery efciency, we consider the ratio , transmitted during the disof the mean number of packets, charge process, to the theoretical capacity of the battery. In order to calculate , we notice that in the chain shown in Fig. 2, a packet transmission corresponds to a left transition, while a charge recovery corresponds to a right transition. Denoting by the number of time units to reach state starting from state , and by the number of right transitions, we nd that

moreover, the number of left and stationary transitions are equal to and , respectively.
Fig. 1. Performance of a bipolar lead-acid battery subjected to six current impulses. Pulse length=3 ms, rest period=22 ms.

Since the probability of making a right transition and a stationary transition are state dependent, the joint probability to reach in time units making right transitions results as

Let us assume a Bernoulli packet arrival process with arrival probability . Starting from , at each time unit, called slot, one charge unit is lost if a packet arrives and has to be transmitted,

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We represent the battery behavior as a discrete time Markov and one absorbing state, process with initial state equal to , corresponding to complete discharge (see Fig. 2). In case of constant current discharge the battery transmits successive packets and goes from to in time units. Using a pulsed discharge, the battery can partially recover its charge during the idle time, and thus transmit a number of packets greater than before reaching state .

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Now, we recognize the second part of (4) as the convolution among sequences that have the following form

(5)
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 average packet arrival rate 0.8 0.9

1.2 PD - N=10 CD - N=10 PD - N=50 CD - N=50

(6)

we obtain
0.8

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0.6

0.4

0.2

(7)
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 average packet arrival rate 0.8 0.9

(8)

packet arrival rate are plotted in Figs. 3 and 4. The curves marked with PD and CD are relative to the pulsed and constant discharge, respectively. As expected, given , performances improve as increases. Moreover, by comparing the two plots, it is evident that for a given (namely =10, 50), a higher gain is obtained under pulsed discharge when the recovery capability of the battery is greater. More interestingly, Figs. 3 and 4 show that stays close to its lowest value when the average packet arrival rate becomes greater than 0.5, no matter what or are used. This nding reveals that an efcient discharge prole can be a more

III. R ESULTS Performances obtained for in the case of both pulsed and constant discharge conditions as functions of the average

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Notice that it holds: , and as greater is as the pulsed discharge outperforms the constant current discharge.

Due to the limited theoretical capacity of the battery, at most packets can be transmitted; thus, the ratio of the mean number of transmitted packets to the theoretical capacity is

Fig. 4.

vs. the average packet arrival rate for =100, =0.01, and

Then, we compute the sum of over by calculating the transform of (4) respect to at . Since the transform of the convolution of sequences is equal to the product of the transform of the sequences and the transform of the sequence in (5) results as

Fig. 3.

where the indices (for ) correspond to the number of right transitions made from state to state , while ) denote the number of the indices (for transitions from a state to itself.

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0.8

0.6

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vs. the average packet arrival rate for =100, =0.1, and

varying.

varying.

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averaging over the packets that are actually transmitted, is presented as a function of the packet arrival rate in Fig.6. From the presented plots it is clear that holding constant and increasing , higher values of are obtained, but also larger delays are introduced when the packet arrival rate becomes greater than 0.4. Battery systems will be more efcient if they can carry very high recovery capability or if the initial value of charge is high. However, our results suggest that performance can be enhanced signicantly for any kind of battery by using discharge proles that allow the battery to properly recover. We conclude that in order to provide efcient battery systems at a low cost, efforts should be focused on dening a smart trafc shaping policy to be used in conjunction with pulsed discharge rather than on battery design alone. It is evident that the tradeoff here is between battery efciency and packets delay. IV. C ONCLUSIONS
AND

Gd

0.6 0.4 0.2 0 0.1

0.2

0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 average packet arrival rate

0.8

0.9

40 35 30 N=10 N=50

average delay [slots]

25 20 15 10 5 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 average packet arrival rate 0.8 0.9

Fig. 6. Average packet delay due to the applied discharge shaping technique. =100, =0.1, and varying.

signicant determinant of battery life than , the initial charge stored in the battery, and , the recovery capability of the battery. Figs. 5 and 6 illustrate the results for =100 and =0.1 obtained when a simple discharge shaping is adopted. The packet arrival process is assumed to be Bernoulli as before, but after each packet transmission, the battery is let recover for at least one time slot; if needs, packets are buffered and transmitted later. From Fig. 5, it can be seen that a signicant improvement is achieved thanks to the shaping technique applied to the discharge process. In this case, is always greater than even for high values of the packet arrival rate. However, the price to pay is the delay that we introduce in the packet transmission. The behavior of the average packet delay, computed by

v u

Fig. 5. and

behavior as a simple discharge shaping is applied. varying.

=100,

=0.1,

F UTURE WORK

In this paper a model of the battery taking into account the dynamic behavior of the recovery mechanism was presented. An analysis of the postulated model was carried out to derive the battery performance under pulsed discharge as ratio of the average transmitted packets to the maximum available battery capacity. Results suggest that great benets are obtained from the pulsed discharge method if the battery is let recover properly. A simple discharge shaping technique was applied showing that performance can be greatly increased if a proper discharge prole is adopted. Further investigation of discharge shaping methods is required to nd the optimal tradeoff between battery efciency and packet delay. Also, an important step in the future work will be the validation of the proposed model through experimental trials using different battery technologies. It is worth to notice that although in this paper the battery discharge process was related to packet transmissions, the showed advantages hold for any battery-powered apparatus supporting applications that allow pulsed discharge. R EFERENCES
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] R.M. LaFollette, Design and performance of high specic power, pulsed discharge, bipolar lead acid batteries, 10th Annual Battery Conference on Applications and Advances, Long Beach, pp. 4347, January 1995. R.M. LaFollette and D. Bennion, Design fundamentals of high power density, pulsed discharge, lead-acid batteries. II Modeling, J. Electrochem. Soc., vol. 137, pp. 37013707, December 1990. T.F. Fuller, M. Doyle, and J. Newman, Relaxation phenomena in lithiumion-insertion cells, J. Electrochem. Soc., vol. 141, pp. 982990, April 1994. B. Nelson, R. Rinehart, and S. Varley, Ultrafast pulse discharge and recharge capabilities of thin-metal lm battery technology, 11th IEEE International Pulsed Power Conference, Baltimore, pp. 636641, June 1997. B. Nelson, TMF ultra-high rate discharge performance, 12th Annual Battery Conference on Applications and Advances, Long Beach, pp. 139 143, January 1997. C.F. Chiasserini and R.R. Rao, Pulsed battery discharge in communication devices, Proc. of Mobicom99, Seattle, August 1999. J. Alzieu, H. Smimite, and C. Glaize, Improvement of intelligent battery controller: state-of-charge indicator and associated functions, J. Power Source, vol. 67, pp. 157161, July-August 1997.

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