JPH02143182A - Warning device for battery - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To accurately warn that a battery is close to the used condition for the use by detecting with a detection circuit for battery voltage drop that a generating voltage is decreased to lower than a reference voltage and giving the warning from a warning generating circuit in accordance with the detected signal. CONSTITUTION:In the case the battery 1 is close to the used condition, an electric power supplied to a transmitting-receiving circuit 5 is also made to be small; therefore, an output power actually outputted from the transmitting- receiving circuit is made to be small as compared with the set value by a power control signal PC. When the difference is increased to larger than a prescribed width, a warning signal S9 is generated by detecting the difference by a sign comparison circuit 9, and an alarm sound generating circuit 4 is driven by this warning signal S9. With this arrangement, the alarm can be given in either cases the battery is exhausted as the reception waiting condition or the output is dropped due to the over-consumption of the battery at the transmitting condition.

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] [Summary] This invention relates to a battery warning device that accurately notifies the spent state of a battery that supplies power to a load circuit whose output power level can be arbitrarily set by an external setting signal. .

The purpose of this system is to provide an accurate warning in good time that the battery is nearing a used-up state, regardless of the amount of current consumed by the load.

A battery voltage drop detection circuit that detects when the voltage generated by the battery has dropped below a predetermined reference voltage, an output power detection circuit that detects the magnitude of the output power actually output from the load circuit, and an output power detection circuit an output power drop detection circuit that detects that the output power value detected by the output power value has become lower by a predetermined amount or more than the set output power value set in the load circuit; and a battery voltage drop detection circuit and/or the output power drop detection circuit. and an R warning generation circuit that generates a warning in response to the detection signal generated by the circuit.

[Industrial application field]

The present invention relates to a battery warning device (battery alarm device) that accurately detects the used state of a battery used as a power source for various devices and issues a warning.

[Conventional technology]

A method of monitoring a drop in the voltage generated by a battery is generally used as a battery alarm device that warns that a battery used as a power source for an apparatus is nearing a used-up state.

FIG. 5 shows such a battery alarm device, N1cd
An example of the use in a mobile phone terminal using a Nickel Cadmium (nickel cadmium) battery as a power source is shown.

In FIG. 5, l is a N1cd battery, 2 is a stabilized power supply circuit, and 3 is a voltage/l! A comparison circuit that compares the +1 terminal voltage VB with the alarm setting voltage VA, 4 an alarm sound generation circuit that generates an alarm sound in response to the output signal from the comparison circuit 3, 5 a portable transmitting/receiving circuit, and 6 a speaker. It is.

The operation of this conventional device will be explained below. When the power of the battery l is consumed by the transmitting/receiving circuit 5 and it approaches a used state, the generated voltage Vs starts to drop suddenly as shown in FIG. 6, for example. The comparator circuit 3 constantly monitors this generated voltage VB. When the generated voltage VB (for example, normally 6.3V) becomes lower than the predetermined alarm setting voltage (for example, /1.5V), an alarm generation signal is output.In response to this alarm generation signal, an alarm sound is generated. The circuit 4 generates an alarm sound from the speaker 6 to warn the user that the battery 1 is close to being used up.

When the generated voltage VB further drops, the power supply to the device is cut off, and the user is therefore required to take countermeasures such as replacing the battery before this state occurs.

[Problem to be solved by the invention]

There is a demand for smaller devices such as mobile phone terminals.
In order to reduce the size of the batteries used for this purpose, N1cd batteries are often used.

This Ni-CD main battery is nearing the end of its life.

As shown in FIG. 6, the voltage has a characteristic of rapidly decreasing. Particularly when the load current is large, the degree of this drop is significant.

On the other hand, in a load circuit such as a mobile phone terminal, the amount of current consumption differs greatly between the reception standby mode and the transmission mode. For example, in the standby mode, the IIR current is about 50 mA, while in the transmit mode it is about 600 mA.

As a result, in the reception standby mode, the slope of the drop in the generated voltage when the battery is used up is relatively gentle, so the battery alarm sound is emitted after the generated voltage V has fallen to the alarm setting voltage. , there is a relatively large amount of time (for example, several tens of seconds) before the voltage drops further and the power to the device is cut off, whereas in transmission mode, which consumes a large amount of current, this time is short and may cause an alarm to occur. The power will be cut off within a few seconds, making it difficult for users to take appropriate precautions in advance when the battery is exhausted.

Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide an accurate warning with plenty of time that the battery is nearing a used-up state, regardless of the magnitude of the current consumption of the load.

[Means to solve the problem]

FIG. 1 is a diagram explaining the principle of the present invention.

The battery warning device according to the present invention includes a load circuit 21 that can arbitrarily set the magnitude of output power by an external setting signal.
A battery voltage drop detection circuit 2 that warns that the battery 22 that supplies power to the battery 22 is in an obsolete state and detects that the voltage generated by the battery 22 has fallen below a predetermined reference voltage.
3, an output power detection circuit 24 that detects the magnitude of the output power actually output from the load circuit 2, and a set output in which the output power value detected by the output power detection circuit 24 is set in the load circuit 21. An output power drop detection circuit 25 that detects that the power value has become lower than a predetermined amount, and a battery voltage drop detection circuit 23 and/or an output power drop detection circuit 25.
and a warning generation circuit 26 which generates a warning in response to generation of a detection signal.

On the other hand, when the power consumption of the load circuit 21 is not so large, the battery 22 is in a used state when the battery voltage drop detection circuit 23 detects that the generated voltage has decreased below the reference voltage. can be detected by
The warning generation circuit 26 generates a warning in response to the detection signal.

[Effect]

When the consumption level of the battery 22 progresses and it approaches a used state, if a large current consumption is used in the load circuit 21, the magnitude of the output power actually output from the load circuit 21 will be changed by the output power output from the load circuit 21. It becomes smaller than the magnitude of the set output power that was set as desired.

This phenomenon of decrease in output power during large current consumption is generally
It is found before the voltage generated by the battery 22 drops below the reference voltage. Therefore, when the current consumption of the load circuit 21 is large, the output power drop detection circuit 25 detects this actual output power drop, and when this is detected, the warning generation circuit 26
A warning will be issued.

〔Example〕

The present invention will be described in detail below with reference to one drawing.

FIG. 2 shows a battery warning device as an embodiment of the present invention. This example device is an application of the present invention to a mobile telephone terminal. In mobile communication systems such as mobile phones or car phones.

In order to prevent the output of unnecessary waves or reduce power consumption, if the received electric field strength is sufficiently high at the communication point where the mobile phone terminal is located, the transmitter's transmission output is lowered to the extent that communication is possible. ing. For this output switching, the automatic power control circuit (APC @ route) of each mobile terminal and base station device is equipped with a function of switching the transmission output in six levels, for example, and the power is transferred at the base station. The electric field strength of the received wave from the LJ terminal is measured, the mobile terminal determines how many watts to set the mobile terminal's transmission output according to the field strength, and the set value is sent to the mobile terminal, and the mobile terminal Automatic power control is performed based on the set value, and the transmission output from the transmitter is controlled to the optimum value. This embodiment is a case where the present invention is applied to a mobile telephone terminal equipped with such a transmitting/receiving circuit.

In Fig. 2, 1 is an N1cd battery (battery), 12 is a stabilized power supply circuit, 3 is a comparison circuit, 4 is an alarm sound generation circuit, 5 is a transmitting/receiving circuit, and 6 is a speaker.1 These are the conventional examples of the 5th RYJ. It is the same as described.

An example of the configuration of the transmitter section of the transmitter/receiver circuit 5 is shown in FIG. Detection circuit 52 detects the power level of the power amplifier 51. APC is performed while referring to the detection output from the detection circuit 52 so that the magnitude of the transmission power of the power amplifier 51 becomes a predetermined setting value.
An automatic power control (APC) circuit 53 generates a voltage and applies it to the power amplifier 51 for automatic control. The APC circuit 5 responds to the power control signal pc indicating the transmission power value that the power amplifier 51 should output based on control information from the base station.
The configuration includes a setting circuit 54 that outputs a setting value for 3. Incidentally, the characteristics of the output power of the power amplifier 5I with respect to the APC voltage of the APC circuit 53 are shown in FIG.

Also, the PC voltage is transferred from the transmitter/receiver circuit 5 to the A/D converter circuit 7.
The APC voltage after A/D conversion is input manually to the control circuit 8. The control circuit 8 divides the input APC voltage into six output power levels as shown in the following table according to the characteristic diagram in FIG. 4, and calculates the maximum output (ATT=OdB
), the signal indicating how many decibels down the level has been set is converted to the code and sent to the code comparison circuit 9 on the 8th day.

In addition to this APC data, for example, the detection output of the detection circuit 52 can also be used to convert it into an output power level.

Further, the power control signal pc from the base station received by the transmitting/receiving circuit 5 is input to the code converting circuit 10, and the code converting circuit 10! 0 converts the signal pc into a signal S10 indicating how many decibels down from the maximum output power as described above, and sends it to the code comparison circuit 9.

The code comparison circuit 9 compares the input signal S8 and SIO, and when the signal 88 from the control circuit 8 becomes lower than the predetermined width with respect to the signal SIO from the code conversion circuit 10, a warning signal S,
is configured to be sent to the alarm sound generation circuit 4 via the OR circuit 11.

The operation of the embodiment device will be explained below.

First, when the transmitter/receiver circuit 5 is in the reception standby mode, which consumes less power, the fact that the battery 1 approaches the used state means that the comparator circuit 3 detects the generated voltage VB of the battery 1 as the reference voltage. Detection signal S3 is detected.
An alarm can be notified by driving the alarm sound generating circuit 4 and generating an alarm sound from the speaker 6 in response to the alarm.

On the other hand, when the transmitting/receiving circuit 5 is in the transmission mode with high current consumption, the magnitude of the output power actually output from the transmitting/receiving circuit 5 and the magnitude of the power setting value instructed by the power charge @ signal PC from the base station. By comparing the values in the sign comparing circuit 9, it is possible to warn of the used state of the battery 1.

That is, when the battery 1 is close to a used state, the power supplied to the transmitting/receiving circuit 5 also becomes small.

The output power actually output from the transmitting/receiving circuit 5 is smaller than the value set by the power control signal PC. If this difference exceeds a predetermined width, the code comparison circuit 9 detects it and issues a warning signal S9. The alarm sound generating circuit 4 is driven by this warning signal S9.

As a result, an alarm can be generated both when the battery runs out in the reception standby state and when the output decreases due to overconsumption of the battery in the transmission state.

Various modifications are possible in carrying out the present invention. For example, in the above-mentioned embodiment, the transmitting/receiving circuit of a telephone terminal is used as the load circuit, but the present invention is of course not limited to this. The present invention is a general circuit part for a type of load circuit whose size fluctuates. Furthermore, the battery used is not limited to the N1cd battery of the embodiment.

Various types of batteries can be used.

〔Effect of the invention〕

According to the present invention, regardless of the magnitude of the current consumption of the load, it is possible to accurately warn that the battery is approaching a used-up state with sufficient time.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a diagram explaining the principle of the present invention. FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing a battery warning bag γ as an embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 3 is a diagram showing an example of the configuration of a transmitter section of a transmitter/receiver circuit in the embodiment device. FIG. 4 is a diagram showing APC voltage versus output power characteristics in a transmitting/receiving circuit. FIG. 5 is a block diagram showing a conventional example of a battery warning device, and FIG. 6 is a diagram showing battery voltage drop characteristics when the battery is used up. In fig. l-・N1cd battery 2-・Stabilized power supply circuit 3・-Comparison circuit 4-Alarm sound generation circuit 5-Transmission/reception circuit・-Speaker・A/D conversion circuit Control circuit・Sign comparison circuit Code conversion circuit-OR circuit This invention Example of implementation Figure 2 Configuration example of transmitting/receiving #i circuit Figure 3 Main issue 111 posts 5y! i Ladder diagram Characteristics of APC voltage vs. output power Figure 4 Conventional example Figure 5

Claims (1)

[Claims] A battery warning device that warns of the exhausted state of a battery (22) that supplies power to a load circuit (21) whose output power can be arbitrarily set by an external setting signal. A battery voltage drop detection circuit (23) that detects that the voltage generated by the battery (22) has dropped below a predetermined reference voltage, and a magnitude of the output power actually output from the load circuit (21). an output power detection circuit (24) that detects that the output power value detected by the output power detection circuit (24) has become lower than the set output power value set for the load circuit (21) by a predetermined amount or more; an output power drop detection circuit (25) that detects this, and a warning that issues a warning in response to the battery voltage drop detection circuit (23) and/or the output power drop detection circuit (25) generating a detection signal. A battery warning device comprising a generating circuit (26).