An Effective Power Consumption Measurement Procedure for Bluetooth Wireless Modules

Measuring quickly and with adequate accuracy, the average power that is dissipated by wireless modules is essential to estimate the real energy consumption and the battery lifetime of portable electronic systems that are provided with wireless connectivity. In this paper, an innovative and effective procedure to measure the average power that is dissipated by Bluetooth modules in different operating conditions is proposed. Such a procedure relies on a high-level parametric finite-state machine describing the behavior of a generic Bluetooth device according to standard specifications. In order to keep the overall measurement uncertainty below a given target value, the sources of uncertainty affecting the procedure are analyzed thoroughly. In addition, some guidelines to reduce the influence of random contributions are described. Finally, a virtual instrument implementing the whole measurement procedure is shown, and some significant experimental results are reported.