New-Tech Magazine - Europe | January Digital edition

New Adapter Regulations for a More Efficient IoT

Jeff Schnabel, CUI

T

ens of billions of “things” are set to be connected to the Internet

The first mandatory energy-efficiency specifications for external adapters came into force in California in 2004. Similar standards were adopted worldwide, and became harmonized as the International Energy Efficiency Marking Protocol for External Power Supplies. Evolution of the protocol has imposed increasingly stringent limits on no-load power consumption and minimum average operating efficiency. In 2014, the US Department of Energy (DoE) announced that all external power supplies (EPS) manufactured after February 10 2016 and marketed in the US must meet the new Level VI efficiency specification. The EU and other authorities, currently operating to Level V specifications, are expected to raise their own requirements to Level VI soon, although none have yet announced official regulations. The new ruling applies to all external power supplies, whether they are shipped as standalone products or in the box with OEM equipment such as notebook PCs,

an AC wall outlet. If an external power adapter is used to provide the low-voltage DC supply for the gateway, designers can simplify the gateway’s internal circuitry and outsource the responsibility to comply with power safety and efficiency standards to the adapter supplier. Making Adapters More Efficient Designers of all sorts of OEM systems have been choosing to power their designs with an external adapter for several decades now. In fact, adapters have been so successful that researchers as long ago as the 1990s foresaw a future powered by billions of the devices. A 1998 study by Alan Meier of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) estimated that about 5% of total residential electricity consumption in the US - worth about $3 billion - was wasted by power supplies while the connected equipment is in standby mode. The percentage was predicted to reach 30% within 20 years if no action was taken.

over the next few years, but not all will be individual IP-addressable sensors. Many will be gateways that concentrate data received from arrays of devices via links such as Bluetooth ® or proprietary low- power radio, or wired point-to-point or fieldbus connections. With these devices included, the Internet of Things (IoT) could be gathering data from more than a trillion sensors to be processed and stored in The Cloud. Much IoT design analysis is focused on ultra-low-power design, enabling endpoints such as smart sensors to run for long periods powered by a battery or by energy harvested from the ambient environment. Gateway devices require significantly more power than a small battery or energy-harvesting system can provide. Unlike sensors, which must be placed in specific locations, gateways allow more flexibility to position the device near a convenient source of power such as

44 l New-Tech Magazine Europe