IoT Development Phases & Test Challenges

Better understand how your IoT project will consume power and shorten battery life start with a test regiment of baseline power analysis. Understand the nominal power usage, the bootup energy requirement, and the power used by peripherals that will be needed. Limit late stage design changes to the project by iteratively testing power usage as you update the software and hardware configurations of your platform.

An important aspect to bringing an IoT product to market is understanding how long the devices battery will last. Will the device have enough power to operate for the desired period of time? Learn how we approach prolonged battery testing.

In order to further understand how your IoT devices will consume power and shorten the battery life you need to understand how the device draws power during its nominal power usage, bootup cycle and from peripheral power draw. With this information, you can use an electronic load to simulate similar current draw scenarios over an extended period of time. This way we can test how a battery will perform under real world use cases as part of an IoT product. Ultimately, this provides more reliable battery requirements data to ensure your IoT product meets customer expectations between recharges or battery replacements.

Whatever your IoT passion, your product likely connects wirelessly to a network, sensors, or both. In the 2.4 GHz band Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Zigbee, and many other wireless protocols compete for data bandwidth. Evaluating the battery implications of exchanging RF data is an important element in understanding the overall operation of any IoT device. Using a IoT development platform we compare methods for measuring the power consumed by different radio operating modes.

Even the simplest sensors and communication protocols need to be characterized before sending an IoT device to market. Characterize error budgets for timing, radio power, and modulation settings in a real environment before critical baseband data errors effect performance. Use a Spectrum Analyzer’s real time bandwidth to analyze the RF signal.

Emulate sensor to hub communication and interference to verify reliability and function in standardized protocols like Z-Wave. Use demodulation and analysis to verify performanc and analyze the communication performance of the protocol.

Low speed serial buses are an important peripheral in many IoT designs due to the number and type of sensors that work on these buses. Investigate and understand timing, decoding, and latency issues that can cause long term reliability and performance issues in your device.

How do you select the best antennas for an IoT application? We consider frequency response, VSWR, and range as key characteristics that help us to understand an antenna’s suitability and its effect on a device’s overall power usage.

Whatever your IoT passion, your product likely connects wirelessly to a network, sensors, or both. In the 2.4 GHz band Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Zigbee, and many other wireless protocols compete for data bandwidth. Evaluating the battery implications of exchanging RF data is an important element in understanding the overall operation of any IoT device. Using a IoT development platform we compare methods for measuring the power consumed by different radio operating modes.

Testing different materials and demonstrating their effect on NFC communication in a short range experiment can be straightforward with the correct probes and instruments to capture the NFC response from an IoT device and a smartphone or other NFC master.