Nordic Semiconductor and Renata SA collaborate to simplify accurate fuel gauging for battery-powered wireless devices

Nordic Semiconductor and Renata SA, a leading global manufacturer and supplier of battery solutions, have announced a partnership enabling customers to select Li-Poly batteries that have already been profiled to operate with the nPM1300 Power Management IC’s (PMIC) highly accurate fuel gauge. This circumvents the battery profiling stage, saves design time at the product development stage, and accelerates time-to-market.

Accurate battery fuel gauging

The nPM1300 PMIC offers unique system management features including battery fuel gauging. The fuel gauging combines hardware and software to provide much higher precision than voltage-based techniques but without the complexity, cost, and power drain of a coulomb counter. The fuel gauge maximizes battery life and eliminates unnecessary charging cycles of wireless products.

As with all highly accurate fuel gauging solutions, Nordic’s fuel gauge requires battery profiling. Nordic provides designers with the ability to do this in house by using the nPM Fuel Gauge board along with an nPM1300 Evaluation Kit. Now, through the partnership with Renata Batteries, Nordic is able to offer a range of pre-profiled battery models that are ideally suited to power Nordic’s nRF52, nRF53 and nRF54 Series Systems-on-Chip (SoCs), as well as the nRF91 Series Systems-in-Package (SiPs) – thus speeding-up the design cycle.

Pre-profiled battery models

As part of the collaboration, Nordic’s R&D engineers have profiled a range of Renata’s rechargeable Li-Poly batteries ranging in sizes from 100 up to 600 mAh cells – creating a series of battery models that Nordic customers can use with the company’s nPM1300’s fuel gauge. The integration of Renata’s high-quality Li-Poly batteries into Nordic’s ecosystem ensures optimized performance and reliability of wireless products. The partnership between the companies also provides Renata customers with access to Nordic’s extensive portfolio of multiprotocol wireless and low power cellular IoT connectivity hardware, firmware, development tools, and reference designs.

“This partnership with Renata means our customers no longer have to go through the battery profiling process themselves,” says Eirik Slettahjell, Technical Product Manager, PMICs at Nordic Semiconductor. “Now all they have to do is download pre-made battery models made by expert Nordic engineers—using the highest quality Swiss-designed Renata batteries—to ensure reliable and accurate fuel gauging that will save time and money.”

“The collaboration between Nordic Semiconductor and Renata is a comprehensive effort to streamline the integration process for battery-powered wireless devices,” says Michael Bertsch, Deputy Line Manager of Renata Industrial Sales. “By combining Renata’s expertise in battery technology with Nordic’s advanced PMIC and SoC solutions, both companies seek to create a seamless experience for developers and end-users.”

For customers preferring to perform battery profiling in-house on any Li-ion or Li-Poly battery, the nPM PowerUP PC app (part of the Nordic’s nRF Connect for Desktop development tools suite) and the nPM Fuel Gauge board, an extension board to the nPM1300 Evaluation Kit, are now available. The software and hardware development tools enable developers to make their own battery models.