Today virtually every electronic device has a standby mode. Power consumption is regulated in most countries by increasingly stringent limits. This makes standardized power measurement essential.
State-of-the-art power supply circuits offer different operating modes that adapt to the actual load case to achieve very high efficiency. That makes current consumption highly distorted and irregular. This must be taken into account in power measurement and correctly calculated.
The relevant standards (IEC 62301 and EN 50564) define the execution and calculation methods, including the required accuracy. However, the required methods are too complex and time-consuming for manual implementation.
The R&S®HMC8015 power analyzer provides seamless acquisition and realtime signal processing and accelerates the measurement. Precise measurement ensures that compliance with the standard can be determined, even for critical designs.
The DUT is simply and safely plugged in to the R&S®HMC8015 through the optional R&S®HZC815 mains adapter. For this purpose, the cables supplied with the adapter are connected to the sockets on the front of the instrument. Various country-specific adapter models are available to enable connection in different countries.
The setup wizard eliminates guesswork
The setup wizard in the R&S®HMC8015 guides the user through the measurement and configures the required instrument parameters. That minimizes measurement errors and makes results quickly visible. The measurement process is fully automatic. No prior knowledge of the abovementioned standards is necessary.
All environment variables, such as the supply voltage and mains quality, are constantly monitored and displayed during the measurement. Deviations are marked in color.
The measurement in detail
First the DUT is connected according to the instructions from the wizard and put in the desired operating mode (1). Selection of the right mains voltage and frequency is supported by a country library. The values can also be set individually for special cases (2).
The next step is to set the current range and crest factor according to the expected power consumption of the device (3).
Finally, the type of current consumption can be set to static, cyclic or variable if this is known (4). That speeds up the measurement. In case of a wrong setting, the R&S®HMC8015 detects the different behavior and still measures correctly.
During the measurement, the status display clearly shows all measurement values and their range of variation (5).
After completion of the measurement, the results can be saved to a USB flash drive. An interactive HTML form is created that can be filled in with customer data, giving you a test report matched to your needs.
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