Generic thermal analysis for phone and tablet systems

Thermal management of handheld systems such as smart phones and tablet systems is becoming increasingly challenging due to increasing power dissipation. These mobile systems pose a significant challenge for implementation of traditional cooling schemes such as heat sinks and fans due to form factor limitations. Instead, new advanced cooling schemes have been developed. This article presents thermal model development from an analysis of today's smart phone thermal management schemes and application of these techniques to a tablet system. Application processor temperature rise and tablet skin temperature are reported for thermal enhancement simulations using this tablet system. Some guiding principles are provided for efficient thermal design of handheld systems.