Experimental validation of the recovery effect in batteries for wearable sensors and healthcare devices discovering the existence of hidden time constants

Wearable sensors and healthcare devices use small lightweight batteries to power their operations of monitoring and tracking. It becomes absolutely vital to effectively utilise all the available battery charge for device longevity between charges. The electrochemical recovery effect enables the extraction of more power from the battery when implementing idle times in between use cycles, and has been used to develop various power management techniques. However, there is no evidence concerning the actual increase in available power that can be attained using the recovery effect. Also, this property cannot be generalised on all the battery chemistries since it is an innate phenomenon, relying on the anode/cathode material. Indeed recent developments suggest that recovery effect does not exist at all. Experimental results to verify the presence and level of the recovery effect in commonly used battery chemistries in wearable sensors and healthcare devices are presented. The results have revealed that the recovery effect significantly does exist in certain batteries, and importantly the authors show that it is also comprised of two different time constants. This novel finding has important implications for the development of power management techniques that utilise the recovery effect with application in a large range of battery devices. © 2017 Institution of Engineering and Technology. All rights reserved.