Extending lifetime of portable systems by battery scheduling (original) (raw)

Multi-battery power supplies are b ecoming popular in electronic appliances of the latest generations, due to economical and manufacturing constraints. Unfortunately, a partitioned b attery subsystem is not able to deliver the same amount of charge as a monolithic battery with the same total capacity. In this paper, we de ne the concept of battery scheduling, we investigate policies for solving the problem of optimal charge delivery, and we study the relationship of such policies with di erent con gurations of the battery subsystem. Results, obtained for di erent workloads, demonstrate that the choice of the proper scheduling can make, in the best case, system lifetime as close as 1% of that guaranteed by a monolithic battery of equal capacity.