Nordic nPM1300/nPM1304 Battery & Power Management Integration Services

A PMIC is created according to the complete product power architecture. All the involved sources and loads should be identified, allowing defining the power tree.

Our engineering team can provide:

• Battery and power input architecture design
• Buck and LDO/load switching allocation
• Rail voltage and current specification
• Power sequencing
• Control of peripheral power domains
• Integration of USB Type-C input
• Battery NTC and thermal measurements
• Resets, watch dogs, and power fail behavior
• Review of schematics and PCB manufacturing
• Prototype testing and debugging

Hardware guidelines established by Nordic state that proper PMIC integration should be performed, considering power distribution as well as additional circuits.

When designing battery charging, it is important to recognize that this is a part of the overall system design rather than simply including charge management IC in the circuit.

A great example of ICs with linear charge management capability is nPM1300 and nPM1304, which can be used for charging various rechargeable lithium batteries like Li-ion, Li-polymer or LiFePO₄ with the ability to configure charge completion voltage.

Apart from linear charge management, nPM1300 and nPM1304 provide features such as thermal battery protection based on JEITA standards and NTC inputs.

In order to achieve the desired charging performance, we will select a charging device depending on the battery type, possible input power, enclosure design, expected temperature and the product usage scenarios. The operation itself will be controlled by firmware that will provide feedback on the charge level and battery state in order to make necessary error corrections.

For products with strict safety or regulatory requirements, charging behavior is reviewed together with the battery pack, protection circuit, thermal conditions, enclosure, and intended operating environment.

A reliable battery indicator requires more than measuring battery voltage. The nPM1300 and nPM1304 support an algorithm-based fuel-gauge solution that provides state of charge (SoC), state of health (SoH), and cycle information.

Nordic's architecture uses monitoring of battery voltage, current, and temperature, with the fuel-gauge algorithm running on the host SoC or MCU.

We incorporate fuel-gauge data into embedded solutions so that battery data becomes relevant at the device level. It varies according to the application.

Percentage of the battery: Display the relevant estimate of remaining charge.

Low battery behavior: Modify how information is collected, radio usage, alerts, and modes of work in case of battery capacity consumption.

The charging status: Indicate charging, full status, input power, or fault messages.

The state of the battery: Make available the health information and cycles.

Telemetry: Transfer data about battery performance via BLE, Wi-Fi, cellular network, MQTT, HTTPS, etc.

Hardware needs to be measured with efficiency for long battery life. Firmware influences when radios, sensors, processors, displays, memory, and peripheral components consume energy.

Our embedded engineers study operating conditions of the device and develop power behaviour around actual input load.

For instance, common states might include active measurement, wireless transmission, connected mode, idle waiting, sleep mode, charging, and recovery from a malfunction.

The PMIC can control power consumption and external load switching and firmware determines when the loads should receive power from the PMIC.

The nPM1300 provides ship mode and hibernate mode, with documented ultra-low-power system behavior, as well as watchdog and failed-boot recovery features. The nPM1304 provides the corresponding system-management capabilities for compact low-power designs.

nPM1304 is documented as design-compatible with Nordic nRF52, nRF53, and nRF54 Series SoCs, as well as third-party host devices. The PMIC is controlled through its I²C-compatible interface, allowing the host system to configure and monitor power-related functions.

The PMIC is well-suited to architectures in which application processing and communications are carried out by a Nordic wireless SoC while the PMIC is responsible for managing battery charging, regulated rails and overall monitoring of the system.

Depending on the architecture of the product, we can provide integration support with the nRF Connect SDK, Zephyr, Nordic SDK-based firmware and custom solutions.

The effectiveness of PMIC largely relies not only on layout but also on choosing the components.

The hardware team analyses present electrical track routing, the placement of regulators, grounding and decoupling, as well as routing of the switching node, problems related to thermal management, battery connection, and sensitive RF and analog parts. The aim is to keep power rails stable while at the same time having as minimum amount of noise as possible in the power lines.

With the advent of miniaturized wearables and battery-operated smart devices, we consider mechanical aspects of the devices, connector positions, battery size, heat dissipation, charging conditions, and manufacturing constraints.

Where appropriate, the design progresses through schematic review, PCB layout, prototype assembly, bring-up measurements, and hardware revisions before production release.