Maximizing Battery Life of IoT Devices By Minimizing Load Current Draw

The Challenge of Measuring Low IoT Currents To maximize battery life, your product current draw must be kept to an absolute minimum. This requires that you use low power components and efficient techniques to de-energize components when they are not in use. You need sensitive measurement instrumentation to measure current levels as low as nA.

Maximizing Battery Life of IoT Devices

By Minimizing Load Current Draw

The Challenge of Measuring Low IoT Currents

To maximize battery life, your product current draw must be kept to an absolute minimum. This requires that you use low power components and efficient techniques to de-energize components when they are not in use. You need sensitive measurement instrumentation to measure current levels as low as nA.

Determine the load current profile

It can be difficult to characterize the load current profile of a prototype IoT device, because you must measure the current in a wide range of operating states:

sleep mode (from nA to µA),
standby modes (from hundreds of microamps to tens of milliamps), and
active states (from milliamps to amps), including short current bursts due to wireless transmissions

To accurately capture these widely varying load current levels, you need an exceptional measurement solution that includes:

A wide current measurement range, from hundreds of nanoamps to amps
The measurement speed to capture current pulses just a few microseconds wide
A large memory buffer to store the prototype device’s current profile

Keithley’s DMM7510 7½-digit Graphical Sampling Multimeter is well-equipped to meet these demands, as it offers:

pA current sensitivity
1 Msample/s sampling
27 M data points of memory

Watch now to learn how to solve the IoT measurement challenges.

Determine the Average Current of an IoT Device

Measuring Ultra-Low Power in Wireless Sensor Nodes

Simulate any battery type

How low can the battery voltage drop before your IoT device turns off? Gauging battery performance at different stages of battery discharge is difficult, as it requires instrumentation that can accurately simulate battery performance.

To address this, Keithley’s 2281S-20-6 Battery Simulator makes it easy to model any type of battery. It allows you to efficiently test prototype IoT devices in any battery state, with high repeatability to effectively estimate battery life. Combining a 2281S-20-6 Battery Simulator with a DMM7510 Graphical Sampling Multimeter will give you a complete solution for assessing power consumption and battery life of your IoT prototypes.

Program the battery simulator for any state of charge, such as near the completely discharged state, to determine how a product performs under a low battery condition and to determine the low battery shut-off voltage.

Model any type of battery

Create any battery model.

The final piece of the puzzle is to create a model for the battery that powers your IoT device. Keithley’s 2450 or 2460 Graphical SourceMeter® Source Measure Unit (SMU) instruments make it easy to create the model for the battery used by your product.

A battery model-generating script operates the SMU instrument as a controlled current load and derives the model parameters.

관련 뉴스

2026년 10월 23일 15시 26분 05초

Chauvin Arnoux C.A 6117 Multifunction Electrical Installation Tester

An all-in-one testing solution that complies with the international standard IEC 60364-6. It features a 5.7-inch color graphical display, supports Type B RCD testing, includes memory for 1,000 measurements, and is equipped with a Lithium-ion battery providing 30 hours of continuous operation

2026년 10월 22일 11시 05분 06초

How Surface Gloss Affects the Perception of Color Intensity, And How to Measure It Accurately

Deciphering optical phenomena such as specular and diffuse reflection, distinguishing between SCI and SCE measurement modes, and providing guidance on using a combined colorimeter and glossmeter to accurately isolate color defects from surface gloss defects

2026년 10월 21일 15시 30분 17초

Plastic Products with Color Streaks: How to Adjust Back Pressure and Screw Speed? How Should Color Be Measured to Verify Proper Adjustment?

In the middle of the night shift, a batch of light-gray plastic emerged, streaked with debris. The machine operator took one look and did what came most naturally: he cranked up the screw speed and increased the back pressure to ensure the orange-colored pellets melted completely. By morning, the color was indeed more uniform. A few weeks later, the customer returned the entire shipment the products had become brittle, cracking at the slightest impact, and the color varied from one delivery to the next, failing to match the approved standard

2026년 10월 20일 16시 35분 05초

Controlling Color in Injection-Molded Products Using a Colorimeter: How to Correctly Interpret Delta E Values

Diagnosing the causes of plastic color variation, managing metamerism, distinguishing between SCI/SCE measurement modes, and applying Delta E standards for color deviation assessment in QA/QC

2026년 10월 20일 15시 07분 44초

EMIN & Fluke Thank You for Attending the Workshop on Optimizing Solar PV System Performance and Operational Safety

On the afternoon of October 19, 2026, the workshop “Solutions for Optimizing Performance and Ensuring Safe Operation of Solar PV Systems” was successfully held at Khanh Hoa College of Technology and Energy.