Enhancing Battery Life in IoT Smart Camera Hardware Design

 In IoT smart home security camera designs, wireless connectivity consumes a significant portion of the power budget. Discover how to manage power efficiently as smart cameras incorporate more processing capabilities.

According to a recent report by Global Market Insights, the smart home security camera market is expected to see significant growth from 2023 to 2032, fueled by a sharp increase in residential criminal activities around the globe.

The U.S. Department of Justice estimates there are approximately 2.5 million burglaries annually. Homeowners are using technology to fight back. IoT adoption in smart homes, such as through easy-to-install video cameras, is boosting detection capabilities and enhancing overall security.

Since these solutions are optimized at the system level, developers of smart IoT video cameras are increasingly integrating machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) to address the rapidly expanding security needs. However, there are still some basic challenges for video cameras—and they involve powering devices with batteries that just don’t meet the challenge.

Inherent Challenges With Video Cameras

Today’s top-selling battery-based Wi-Fi smart cameras use batteries—able to last a mere 3 to 6 months. Given the flexibility of IoT devices, the number of devices used, and where they are placed, changing out batteries that often—with the associated costs—is problematic. 

Wireless smart cameras often consume a substantial portion of the system's power—up to 50 percent—just for connectivity, even when they are idle but still connected to the network. Wi-Fi was initially designed for high bandwidth data transfer—not low power. Transmitting radio frequency (RF) consumes immense energy that increases with long-range data transfers. 

To fulfill the potential of today’s cloud-connected, always-on, wireless smart video cameras, Wi-Fi transmission needs to operate at power levels comparable to Zigbee and Bluetooth protocols. Achieving these power levels can significantly extend battery life.

This shift towards lower power operation and reduced costs can lead to increased adoption and enable advanced features such as those provided by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

Design considerations also include integrating Wi-Fi provisioning with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). As IoT devices are dynamic, features like Firmware-Over-the-Air (FOTA) can be used to upgrade systems or update AI models. High Wi-Fi throughput supports these updates efficiently, offering operational benefits, lower total cost of ownership, and simplified operation and deployment.

Why is Enhancing Smart Wireless Video Cameras Important?

Wireless smart security cameras and video doorbells monitor activity and respond to motion or sound by sending alerts to a homeowner’s phone or email from the cloud. In contrast, an advanced smart wireless camera with AI capabilities can more precisely distinguish between genuine emergencies and routine occurrences.

 

AI software uses object modeling and machine learning to continually enhance its functionality and insights. For example, it can recognize a dog running onto the porch as a harmless event and avoid triggering an alert. However, if a window is broken or a package is stolen from the porch, the AI system will record the incident and send a notification.

Cloud-connected smart cameras have three main modes:

• Sleep
• Wi-Fi idle connected
• Active video streaming

In sleep mode, the camera operates at its lowest power level and only activates when a local interrupt, such as a motion sensor trigger or button press, occurs. During this state, current consumption is typically in the range of tens of microamps.

Wi-Fi idle connected requires a slightly higher amount of current, on the order of 100's of microamps, to monitor for interrupts and to maintain connectivity to the Wi-Fi router to listen for messages from the cloud to wake the system. 

With active video streaming, the entire camera system captures and transmits video to a cloud service. This requires a much higher power mode since the camera's video processor and Wi-Fi chipset are in full operation. In this case, the current consumption can reach approximately 250 mA at 3.3 V.

Maximizing Battery Life is Critical

Maximizing battery life requires minimizing overall current consumption. While this may seem straightforward, it’s far from simple. One key strategy is selecting low-power components for the camera design, including the Wi-Fi chipset, video processor, and power management unit. In such designs, meticulous attention to hardware system design is crucial, as every microamp counts.

By optimizing the functionality to reduce the time spent in high-power modes and efficiently managing system resources, battery life can be significantly extended. For instance, using the Wi-Fi chipset to monitor the system instead of relying on the video processor can greatly increase the operating time of a camera.

Two major challenges in designing video IoT devices are ensuring long battery life and providing reliable wireless cloud connectivity. Surprisingly, only about 10% of video cameras are battery-operated, largely due to battery life constraints. Transitioning to a wireless format has been particularly challenging, as power-hungry Wi-Fi can quickly deplete the batteries of video cameras.

Fortunately, advanced technologies now offer solutions to this issue. With optimized embedded hardware and software solutions, like those provided by Silicon Signals, power consumption can be drastically reduced. This enables battery-operated devices to last longer while maintaining the untethered wireless connectivity required for cloud-based applications. For instance, cloud-connected smart video cameras can now be designed with smaller batteries without compromising on battery life, giving designers greater flexibility in creating compact, efficient, and long-lasting products.

Enabling Technology Based on Digital Polar Radio

Let’s delve into the cutting-edge technology that powers Silicon Signals’ IoT solutions. At the heart of extending battery life for video cameras and enabling a range of future features is our advanced ultra-low power Wi-Fi and BLE platform. By leveraging our innovative digital polar radio design, we effectively address the challenges of power-hungry processing seen in previous radio architectures.

Contrary to the common belief that Wi-Fi consumes too much power for battery-operated devices, our technology defies this assumption. It allows cameras to operate without being tethered to wired connections for both power and network, thus improving data accuracy for cloud processing and offering greater placement flexibility for IoT devices. This approach not only enhances battery life but also paves the way for more versatile and efficient smart solutions.

 

Proven in the IoT Field

Silicon Signals’ advanced technology is making significant strides in various IoT applications, including enhanced baby monitors, security cameras, video doorbells, access control systems, and identity verification. Our ultra-low power Wi-Fi and BLE platform is at the core of these innovations.

For instance, our AI-enabled smart video cameras, powered by this cutting-edge platform, offer battery life that is 2-3 times longer than current solutions, and even extend to multiple years when combined with a solar panel.

In the realm of smart homes, security systems with real-time threat detection, monitoring, and alerts are essential. Our technology addresses this need by providing IoT Wi-Fi video cameras with significantly longer battery life and efficient power management. This advancement is driving quicker adoption and fostering new, innovative use cases. Additionally, our platform enhances the performance of firmware and AI model updates through high-speed data throughput, ensuring that devices stay current with the latest technology and security improvements.