How Do You Calculate Power Consumption in a PCB?
Calculate Power Consumption in a PCB
Printed circuit boards (PCBs) are the backbone of electronic devices that power up, operate and perform tasks. Their design and performance are crucial to a product’s overall functionality and battery life. Understanding how to calculate power consumption in a PCB can help engineers and others involved in the design, production and testing of electronic devices reduce their power-consuming components, improve energy efficiency, extend device battery life and minimize environmental impact.
Power consumption in a pcb can be broken down into active and idle power usage. Active power consumption refers to the amount of energy used by a device’s central processing unit, displays, memory and other integrated circuits while it is operational. It also includes the energy consumed by LEDs and relay coils when they are activated to operate devices. Idle power consumption is the amount of power consumed when a device is turned off or not in use, such as a laptop or smartphone.
The basic structure of a PCB is made up of a substrate and a conductive layer. The substrate is typically a rigid insulating material such as FR-4, a fiberglass/epoxy composite, but can also be a flexible plastic that allows the board to fold and bend. The conductive layer is typically a thin sheet of copper. A single-sided PCB has one conductive layer laminated to the substrate, while double-sided and multilayer PCBs alternate between the substrate and conductive layers.
How Do You Calculate Power Consumption in a PCB?
Components on a PCB connect to each other via traces that facilitate communication between them and with the battery, voltage regulators and other parts of the circuit. The traces are drawn by the PCB layout designer using a computer-aided design tool. These tools have built-in rules that prevent a net’s traces from touching each other, and that determine the different widths of traces and spaces needed to achieve the proper connectivity for a specific PCB.
Once a PCB design passes a final design review check (DRC), it’s ready to be sent out to a PCB manufacturer. This process will take the design files that contain all the information and data needed to build the PCB and output the different drawings that will be silk-screened on the exterior layers of the board. This includes the different text and markings that will be used to identify the various component footprints, and the traces, power and ground planes, etc.
Whether you’re a seasoned engineer, an aspiring student planning to enter the industry or simply an electronics hobbyist, learning how to calculate power consumption in a PCB is essential. This guide aims to serve as your seminal resource, providing an invaluable overview of the essential topics you need to master.