Pitfalls of LPWA Power Consumption: Hands-On Design of Current Probe

The unique opportunities introduced by the emerging Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications have accelerated the momentum of the massive Machine-Type Communications (mMTC) worldwide. As the number of already deployed Low-Power Wide-Area (LPWA) applications growth exponentially over the last decade, new open challenges started to be discussed across the industry sector. The most critical parameter of the LWPA devices in question is energy efficiency and the overall power consumption of designed end-devices. Therefore, the need for precise measurement of power consumption has attracted engineers’ attention as the unique communication parameters of the LPWA devices form the current consumption measurements challenging task. To facilitate accurate current measurements ranging between hundreds of nA and hundreds of µA, we propose a unique design of the current probe prototype. We then demonstrate the obtained results concerning the accuracy, measurement range switching, and sufficient sampling speed. All the measurements from the designed prototype are further compared with the industry-grade DC power analyzer Agilent N6705B.