Big radio fleet, lots of batteries? Here's something for you...

Fact: A portable two-way radio is only as good as the battery that powers it.

When customers have large fleets of radios its often difficult to keep track of when a battery needs to be replaced due to age or damage. Many system operators rely on the users to decide when a battery needs replacing - though as mots of us know, (non-technical) radio users cannot be relied upon to make this sort of a call.

A little story I like to tell.

Many years ago, before the introduction of IMPRES™, Motorola used to sell a nifty piece of test equipment known as a Battery Optimizing System (BOS). This device was used to test and rejuvenate, otherwise dead or low capacity batteries. I remember eing sent to visi a large customer to demonstrate this unit. They pointed me to a corner where a massive bin was standing, filled with defective two-way radio batteries destined for waste disposal. I showed them how to use it and they went through these batteries and found that around 70% could infact be put back into service.

Motorola don't sell the BOS anymore but you can, by the way, still get its successor from the supplier.

Some background

About 10 years ago, Motorola introduced a range of intelligent portable two-way radio batteries - known as IMPRES™ (Intelligent Motorola Portable Radio Energy System). Inside these batteries is a circuit that measures and records certain aspects of charge and discharge. The charger is able to read this information and knows whether or not to, for example, charge the battery.

You see, one of the worst things you can do to almost any rechargeable battery is to not allow it to completely discharge before charging it. Lithium-Ion batteries are more forgiving but Nickel-Metal-Hydride batteries will soon develop so-called memory if users do this. Lithium-Ion batteries also suffer from this memory effect to a lesser degree - ask my daughter, she can tell you.

Motorola IMPRES™ batteries can be charged around 150 times more and will therefore last around 43% longer than standard (non-IMPRES) batteries. For customers, this means that they don't need to stock so many spare batteries and can save money. IMPRES™ batteries come in a variety of capacities and chemistry to suit almost all applications.

When IMPRES™ batteries are combined with IMPRES™ chargers, they offer a range of advanced features including adaptive reconditioning and end-of-life display which means that they can recover much better from incorrect operation and improper charging. Also, users know when it's time to consider a replacement.

For even more advanced features, IMPRES™ Battery Management allows customers to monitor and manage battery health in real time using IMPRES™ networked chargers or Over The Air via the radio the battery is attached to.

An IMPRES™ contains energy measurement and memory circuitry and stores information about how long the batteries has been charged for and when as well as how much energy it dispensed during operation. All of this allows the IMPRES™ charger to determine whether to charge or recondition the battery. The information within the IMPRES™ battery will also assist the charger in determining whether the battery is end of life.

An IMPRES™ battery charger with no display will show the battery state via the LED. An IMPRES™ charger with display will show some information about the battery - this includes the remaining capacity.

An IMPRES™ battery will also communicate with the MOTOTRBO radio it is used on. This will allow the radio to be used as a communications mechanism for Over The Air IMPRES™ Battery Management.
Of course it's also possible to extract the IMPRES data directly from the battery via a charger if needed.

A picture is worth a thousand words

So how would an IMPRES™ Battery Management setup look like?

There are three ways to get the IMPRES data from a battery:

- From the battery physically via the Charger and Charger Interface Unit (CIU).
- Over The Air via a Control Station or via NAI or MNIS.
- Both of the above.

Both of these methods are shown in the above diagram. The point being, you don't need all this stuff if you're only going to use one of these methods.

CIU

On the back of a IMPRES Single UNit Charger is a RJ6 socket. On the back of a Multi Unit Charger is a D-sub connector. This allows the connection of a Charger Interface Unit (CIU). This acts as a USB interface between the PC hosting the IMPRES Fleet Management software.

Control Station

If a Control Station is used, the architecture is almost the same as OTAP in Radio Management, except a different UDP port is used to get the IMPRES data from the battery. If you're going to be doing IMPRES over the air, then you need to seriously consider implementing ARS - this prevents Battery Management from having to poll radios that arent there.

Also, using Over The Air will be slow if you have a lot of batteries so you (your customer) need(s) to be patient. It might be a good idea to use one charger/CIU to get day-one battery information and then let the updates occur over time via Over The Air.

MNIS

This is pretty much the same as using a Control Station, except in this case you'd need to install the NAI Data Licence on the repeater (Conventional/IPSC/Capacity Plus) or use a MNIS Data Gateway (Capacity Max).

The software would in this case, use MNIS to communicate with the radio. The radio is also able to read the IMPRES data from the battery and transmit this in much the same way as it does for GPS/text etc.

What will IMPRES Battery Management show?

Have a look at this:

More to follow so "stay tuned". If you found this useful or interesting, please click like if you found your way here via one of the social networks (see top right of this page, in the masthead).