OrionM2M® BatteryCare technology

LoRaWAN was created as a technology for ultra-low-power devices, and manufacturers promise them 10–15 years of battery life. In practice, a large share of devices on the market live for 1–2 years: the battery degrades not because of data transmission, but because of how the radio module’s power supply is built.

A typical failure chain looks like this: a current peak at the moment of transmission causes a voltage drop (brownout), the controller reboots, the device falls into a storm of repeated Join requests, the battery drains faster, and after 12–24 months the device goes silent. A replaceable battery does not solve the problem: a replacement costs more than the device itself and defeats the idea of maintenance-free metering.

OrionM2M® BatteryCare removes the cause, not the effect. The battery does not power the radio during transmission: it charges a buffer capacitor with a small current, and the buffer takes the peak. The microcontroller manages the supply level and protects the lithium thionyl chloride battery from passivation. As a result, the device reaches its stated service life, and the total cost of ownership is several times lower than for solutions with a replaceable battery.

A detailed analysis with oscillograms is in the knowledge base article BatteryCare.