Strategies of Efficient Backlighting System for Portable Two-Way Radio Design

Abstract: In the 2-way radios market, long battery life has becomes an essential & critical customer requirement for communications during critical public safety or rescue missions. Thus in tandem with this need, various researches have been conducted by industry players to reduce the current consumption of the design with minimum sacrifices on product performance. This paper attempts to describe various key strategies that can be adopted in the design of backlighting system for portable two ways radio design to reduce the overall current drain consumptions. Case study was carried out on the keypad and liquid crystal display (LCD) backlighting systems of the off-the-shelf portable two-way radio in the market and recommendations for optimizations were laid forward which includes careful selection of LED, light guide and power management topology to drive the light emitting diodes (LEDs) in an efficient manner and successfully reducing current drain consumptions by a remarkable 24 %.

Keywords: Backlights, battery life, current drain reduction, efficiency.