KR20010059820A - Apparatus for controlling a power consumttion rate of receiver in radio mobile terminal equipment - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE: A power consumption amount reducing apparatus of a radio terminal according to a field state is provided to reduce battery power consumption by suitably controlling power consumption amount according to a field state of a place where a radio terminal is positioned. CONSTITUTION: A low-noise amplifier(210) amplifies a received signal. A variable bias unit(220) varies a bias current value according to an amplification control signal applied from a controller. The controller varies the bias current value to a suitable value according to field strength of a place where a radio terminal is positioned. The signal suitably amplified by the low-noise amplifier(210) passes to a filter(230) and mixed to an oscillation frequency outputted from a variable mixer(240) to a local oscillator(250). The variable mixer(240) converts the mixing operation according to the state of the amplification control signal applied from the controller. The mixed signal is changed to a low frequency and applied to a signal processor(260) so as to be processed. Consequently, the controller recognizes the field strength of the place whether the terminal is positioned and outputs a corresponding amplification control signal. The amplification control signal is applied to the variable bias unit(220) and the variable mixer(240). The bias current value applied to the low-noise amplifier(210) is controlled and the mixed state of the oscillation frequency, and the inputted signal is controlled.

Description

Device for reducing power consumption of wireless terminal according to electric field status {APPARATUS FOR CONTROLLING A POWER CONSUMTTION RATE OF RECEIVER IN RADIO MOBILE TERMINAL EQUIPMENT}

The present invention relates to a wireless terminal, and more particularly, to an apparatus for properly adjusting the power consumption according to the electric field state where the wireless terminal is located.

Portable wireless terminals must reduce power consumption due to their inherent characteristics. This is a result of using a battery as an operating power source to ensure portability. For low power consumption, recent wireless terminals are in a standby state of a call and are implemented to repeat on / off of a power supply at regular intervals. When the operating power is turned on, the wireless terminal receives a radio signal and determines whether the received signal is a signal corresponding to the radio terminal. In the case of the signal corresponding to the self, the signal is switched to the call mode, and the received signal is amplified and processed to a certain extent to thereby perform the call.

On the other hand, the user using the wireless terminal is constantly moving, it will not be able to continuously receive a radio signal having the same electric field strength. In addition, the electric field strength of the signal received by the wireless terminal may be changed by various factors.

However, the conventional wireless terminal having the configuration shown in the drawing is to perform the above-described reception operation of the radio signal in the same state regardless of whether the electric field strength of the received signal corresponds to the weak field or the strong field. have. In other words, in the situation of weak electric field, signal amplification is more and more necessary in wireless signal processing of wireless terminal, and in the case of strong electric field, it is not a problem in call processing even if less amplification is performed. In general, a wireless terminal processes a received signal in the same state regardless of such a change in electric field strength. As a result, in the situation of the strong electric field, the conventional wireless terminal has not achieved this, despite the signal processing conditions that can achieve a relatively low power consumption compared to the situation of the weak electric field.

For reference, in order to process a radio signal constantly regardless of a change in electric field strength, a conventional radio terminal has its function fixed to achieve processing of a corresponding signal in accordance with a state of a weak electric field, which is the worst condition for signal reception. have. This is an advantage in that it provides a constant call environment to the users of the wireless terminal, but in the situation that does not necessarily have to deal with such a state, that is, in the situation of a strong power consumption is required to operate according to the unnecessary power of the terminal This has led to the problem of reducing battery life.

Moreover, with the recent rapid development of wireless terminal technology and systems, and its widespread popularity, many wireless terminal users often make calls in a strong electric field situation. Signal processing is performed according to the situation of the weak electric field, resulting in power consumption.

Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide a device for appropriately adjusting the power consumption according to the electric field state where the wireless terminal is located, thereby reducing the battery power consumption.

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention provides a variable bias unit for controlling a signal amplification degree of the low noise amplifier by varying a bias current value according to a state of an amplification control signal applied thereto, and according to a state of an applied amplification control signal. And a variable mixing unit for adjusting and outputting a mixed state of the input signal and the oscillation frequency, and a control unit for determining the intensity of the received electric field strength and dividing the amplification control signal according to the result.

1 is a view showing a configuration of a receiver of a conventional wireless terminal.

Figure 2 is a view showing the configuration of the receiver of the wireless terminal to which the power consumption adjustment apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention.

3 is a view showing a power consumption state in the standby state of the wireless terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Hereinafter, exemplary embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. First of all, in adding reference numerals to the components of each drawing, it should be noted that the same reference numerals have the same reference numerals as much as possible even if displayed on different drawings. Also, in the following description, many specific details such as components of specific circuits are shown, which are provided to help a more general understanding of the present invention, and the present invention may be practiced without these specific details. It is self-evident to those of ordinary knowledge in Esau. In the following description of the present invention, if it is determined that a detailed description of a related known function or configuration may unnecessarily obscure the subject matter of the present invention, the detailed description thereof will be omitted.

First, Figure 1 is an accompanying drawing for understanding the description of the power consumption control apparatus according to the present invention, a view showing the configuration of a receiver of a conventional wireless terminal. Apparatus for adjusting the power consumption according to the present invention is that the application can be made most appropriately in the wireless terminal receiver of the configuration shown in FIG.

Referring to this, the low noise amplifier (LNA) 110 amplifies a radio signal received in a weak state into a predetermined band. The amplification degree is determined by the bias unit 120 here. The signal output from the low noise amplifier 110 is filtered by a predetermined band through the filter unit 130, so that only a desired wireless signal band is passed. The filter unit 130 is typically implemented as a SAW filter. Mixer 140 converts the frequency of the radio signal to a lower frequency. This is achieved by mixing the signal output through the filter unit 130 and the oscillation frequency oscillated from the local oscillator 150. The mixed signal converted to the low frequency is applied to the signal processor 160 at a later stage and then subjected to appropriate processing.

2 is a view illustrating a state in which a power consumption control apparatus according to the present invention is applied to a wireless terminal receiver having such a configuration.

In FIG. 2, the overall receiver is similar to the configuration shown in FIG. However, the bias unit 110 and the mixing unit 140 will be replaced by the variable bias unit 220 and the variable mixing unit 240 according to the present invention.

This will be described in more detail with reference to FIG. 2.

First, the low noise amplifier 210 amplifies the received signal. Here, the amplification degree is adjusted by the variable bias unit 220. The variable bias unit 220 changes the bias current value by an amplification degree control signal applied from a controller (not shown). The control unit changes the bias current value to an appropriate value according to the electric field strength of the place where the wireless terminal is located. The signal amplified by the low noise amplifier 210 is passed through a predetermined band through the filter unit 230, which is mixed with the oscillation frequency output from the local oscillator 250 in the variable mixing unit 240. The variable mixing unit 240 appropriately converts and processes the mixing operation according to the state of the amplification degree control signal applied from the control unit. This is also determined by changing according to the electric field strength where the terminal is located. The mixed signal is applied at a low frequency to the signal processor 260 to process the corresponding signal. As a result, the controller grasps the electric field strength where the terminal is located, and outputs an amplification control signal according to the result. The amplification degree control signal output is applied to the variable bias unit 220 and the variable mixing unit 240, and adjusts the bias current value applied to the low noise amplifier 210 according to the result of the application, and at the same time the oscillation frequency and input It is to adjust the mixing state of the signal.

The operation thereof will be described in more detail with reference to FIG. 3.

As mentioned above, the control unit in the present invention determines what the field strength (RSSI) of the received signal, for example, in the case of a weak electric field and a medium electric field is recognized as a normal signal. In such a case, the amplification degree control of the low noise amplifier 210 and the frequency mixing state of the variable mixing unit 240 control the bias current value of the variable bias unit 220 so that the maximum performance is shown by the normal current, and the variable mixing. The adjustment of the current value applied to the unit 240 is controlled. The control state thereof is to perform the on / off operation of the power supply as shown in the state (a) of FIG. However, in the case of recognizing a strong electric field of a predetermined electric field or more, the current of the variable bias unit 220 and the variable mixing unit 240 is reduced to turn on / off the power as shown in FIG. Processing is carried out. In other words, in this case, the processing is performed so as to perform on / off operation of the power supply with the current reduced in the operation time.

On the other hand, in the practice of the present invention, the current consumed at the moment the power is turned on is judged as the following result. The state shown in FIG. 3 also follows this result.

First, if the state of the battery consumption in the wireless terminal receiving unit is described by dividing the specific example as an example,

1.Sleep Current Consumption at Sleep: 10mA-Minimum Power Consumption of Terminal (a)

2.LNA consumption current (weak, medium electric field): 17mA-LNA current consumption (b)

LNA amplification degree (weak, medium electric field): 16dB-maximum performance amplification degree at weak, medium electric field (c)

LNA Current Consumption (Strength Field): 3mA-Minimum Performance Current Consumption in Strong Field (d)

LNA amplification degree (strong field): 6dB-minimum performance amplification degree in strong field (e)

3. Bias section current (weak, medium electric field): 10mA-LNA operating bias current (f)

2mA-Minimum Performance Bias Current in Strong Fields (g)

4.MIXER current (weak, medium electric field): 10mA-MIXER current consumption (h)

MIXER amplification degree (weak, medium electric field): 9dB-maximum performance amplification degree in weak electric field (i)

MIXER current (strong field): 3mA-Minimum performance MIXER current consumption in high field

MIXER amplification degree (strong field): 3dB-minimum performance MIXER amplification degree (k)

5. Other receiver circuit: 27mA-Signal processor of second stage (secondary MIXER, AGC control,

Demodulation Circuit) Current Consumption (l)

Becomes

Accordingly, in the case of power-on in FIG. 3, 70mA of current is consumed by including the current of the other receiver circuit branch from the above sleep current.

That is, (a) + (b) + (f) + (h) + (l) = 70 mA.

This becomes the current consumption in a normal state, and when changing to a strong electric field situation, the current of the low noise amplifier (LNA), the bias portion, and the mixing portion decreases, and thus the current consumption occurs as follows.

That is, (a) + (d) + (g) + (j) + (l) = 45 mA.

According to the above state of current consumption, the battery consumption time can be calculated as follows.

First, in the case of a weak electric field,

;

Next, in the case of a strong electric field,

Becomes

After all, as can be seen from the above calculation results, the battery consumption time is about 73 hours in the weak and medium electric field, and by controlling the current consumption state in accordance with the implementation of the present invention in the strong field, it is possible to increase the standby battery consumption time to 85 hours. have. That's about 16% more battery life.

For reference, the criterion of the strong electric field described above is higher than the electric field strength with sufficient margin in receiving a signal in consideration of the amplification degree of the minimum performance of the low noise amplifier and the amplification degree of the minimum performance of the mixing section. That is, when the amplification degree of the low noise amplifier decreases by 10 dB and the amplification degree of the combiner decreases by 7 dB, it becomes a criterion of the signal intensity that can be received by the signal.

If the field strength of the arbitrarily acceptable threshold value is assumed to be -102 dBm and the margin is calculated to be about 10 dB,

Minimum Acceptable Threshold Field Strength + Margin + Low Noise Amplifier Amplification Degradation + Mixer Amplification Degradation State

= -102 dBm + 10dB + 10dB + 7dB

= -75 dBm

That is, the electric field strength of -75 dBm or more can be determined as a strong electric field, and in this case, the on / off operation of the power supply can be performed to reduce the current consumption as described above.

Meanwhile, in the detailed description of the present invention, specific embodiments have been described, but various modifications may be made without departing from the scope of the present invention. Therefore, the scope of the present invention should not be limited to the described embodiments, but should be defined not only by the scope of the following claims, but also by the equivalents of the claims.

As described above, the present invention can increase the battery usage time of the wireless terminal, and as a result, it is possible to achieve the convenience of use and the effect of reducing the size of the battery.

Claims (2)

In the device for reducing power consumption of a wireless terminal, A low noise amplifier for controlling the amplification degree of the received signal and outputting the same; A variable bias unit configured to adjust a signal amplification degree of the low noise amplifier by varying a bias current value according to an applied amplification degree control signal; A variable mixing unit for adjusting and outputting a mixed state of the input signal and the oscillation frequency according to the applied amplification degree control signal, And a control unit for determining the strength of the received electric field strength and dividing the amplification degree control signal according to the result, thereby reducing the power consumption according to the state of the received electric field. The method of claim 1, wherein the control unit, When the strength of the received electric field strength is a strong electric field of a predetermined electric field or more, the device to reduce the power consumption according to the state of the receiving electric field by processing to reduce the current applied to the variable bias unit and the variable mixing unit.