Patent Grant
10701492
The present invention is related to a method of monitoring state of health of a battery comprised in a hearing device, to a hearing device as well as to an arrangement comprising the hearing device.
Hearing devices comprise electronic components that must be supplied with electric energy during operation. This is achieved by either providing a regular battery or by a rechargeable battery within the housing of the hearing device.
For rechargeable batteries, it is well known that the initially available capacity diminishes after repeated full discharge/charge cycles. Other circumstances may also affect available capacity of a rechargeable battery, as for example when rechargeable batteries are stored over long time at a fully charged state (as when being left in the charger after a charging cycle has been completed), or when rechargeable batteries are discharged below a safe low voltage level or are charged above a maximum charging level. Rechargeable batteries reaching about 80% of its initial or nominal capacity are deemed to be defect and need to get replaced.
The reason for the gradual deterioration of a rechargeable battery is due to irreversible physical and chemical changes which take place with usage and with age.
From time to time, all hearing devices are checked for a flawless operation by a hearing device professional. On this occasion, a defective rechargeable battery—or one that is about to reach its end of life—should also be replaced. While a defective rechargeable battery might be easily identified, a rechargeable battery that is about to reach its end of life is not easily identifiable. Therefore, every rechargeable battery must undergo specific tests in order to obtain assurance with regard to the question whether the rechargeable battery may still remain in the hearing device or whether it must be replaced because a battery failure is likely to occur before the next visit at the hearing device professional's office. Such tests incorporate additional measurements and are therefore time consuming.
WO 2004/084582 A1 describes a rechargeable battery for a hearing device comprising a memory to store charging control parameters for an optimized charging algorithm in order to positively influence total battery life time.
US 2012/0130660 A1 discloses a power consumption monitor in a hearing device that is used to monitor the charge of a battery to predict and indicate to the user when it is time to charge the battery again to allow uninterrupted operation of the hearing device.
Although the known techniques allow to optimally operate a hearing device in terms of energy consumption and energy availability, respectively, the known techniques do not provide any indication as to when a rechargeable battery being used to provide energy to the hearing device must be replaced because the rechargeable battery has reached its end of life.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a method of monitoring state of health of a battery.
The term “state of health of a battery”, as it is used in connection with the present invention throughout this description, must be understood as a measure that reflects the general condition of a battery and its ability to deliver the specified performance compared with a fresh battery. It may take into account such factors as charge acceptance, internal resistance, voltage and self-discharge. It is a measure of the long term capability of the battery and gives an indication not an absolute measure of how much of the available lifetime energy throughput of the battery has been consumed, and how much is left.
First, the present invention is directed to a method of monitoring state of health of a rechargeable battery comprised within a hearing device, the rechargeable battery being adapted to provide energy for electronic components of the hearing device, the method comprising the steps of:
The service personnel is able to know if the rechargeable battery in the hearing device needs to be replaced without performing any additional measurements.
In an embodiment of the method according to the present invention 1, the step of determining the performance level comprises the steps of:
Further embodiments of the method according to the present invention, further comprise the step of indicating the determined performance level to at least one of:
In further embodiments of the method according to the present invention, the step of determining the number of full equivalent charges in a time slot comprises the steps of:
In still further embodiments of the method according to the present invention, the step of estimating the state of battery charge level comprises the steps of:
In still further embodiments of the method according to the present invention, the time slots are predefined time slots particularly having a length of 100 to 1'600 hours, more particularly being equal to 500 hours, of actual usage of the hearing device.
In still further embodiments of the method according to the present invention, the step of determining the number of full equivalent charges is performed within the hearing device.
In still further embodiments of the method according to the present invention, the step of comparing the number of full equivalent charges and the step of determining the performance level are performed in an auxiliary device outside of the hearing device.
Second, the present invention is directed to a hearing device comprising
wherein the processor is adapted to perform the steps of method according to the present invention.
Third, the present invention is directed to an arrangement comprising a hearing device and an auxiliary device,
wherein the transceiver and the auxiliary transceiver are adapted to exchange information, wherein the processor is adapted to determine a number of full equivalent charges in time slots, and wherein the auxiliary processing unit is adapted to determine a performance level of the rechargeable battery in dependence on the number of full equivalent charges within a time slot.
It is pointed out that the above-mentioned embodiments may be combined in any manner to obtain further embodiments.
Only those embodiments or combinations of embodiments are excluded that would result in contradictions.
Below, the invention is described in more detail by referring to drawings showing exemplified embodiments.
The embodiments are meant as examples and shall not confine the invention.
In an example, the microphone 2 converts sounds into electrical signals and provides the electrical signals to the processor 4, which processes the electrical signals according to a sound shaping algorithm to produce a modulated output signal that is customized to a user's particular hearing ability. The modulated output signal is provided to the speaker 8, which reproduces the modulated output signal as an audio signal and which provides the audio signal to the ear piece 10 through the ear canal tube 9. In an alternative embodiment, the speaker 8 may be included within an ear piece 10 and may be coupled to circuit 3 by a wire extending through ear canal tube 9.
In some instances, the transceiver 6 operates as an input/output terminal. Thereto, the transceiver 6 provides wired or wireless communication to a remote device (not shown in
In the following, a method according to the present invention is described that is applied in the hearing device of
When the method according to the present invention is applied, it is assumed that the user of the hearing device does not change his or her average usage pattern over a reasonably long time, for example one month. Thus, the usage time of the hearing device is divided into time slots of one month or 500 hours, for example. For each such time slot, a number of full equivalent charges per usage time is measured.
In order to further illustrate this, an example is given. In the example, it is assumed that the rechargeable battery is charged daily resulting in 30 charges per month. Furthermore, it is assumed that the rechargeable battery is only partially discharged down to 23% remaining charge. For this example, a full equivalent charge of 30×(100%−23%)=23.1 are applied to the rechargeable battery. I.e. the state of NOMINAL charge of the battery of the hearing device is estimated before and after charging, and the difference over a time slot are than accumulated.
Given the constant usage pattern over such a time frame, the number of full equivalent charges will remain constant if the state of health of the rechargeable battery is unchanged. However, the number of full equivalent charges will increase for a bad battery, as the effectively available charge diminishes, while the estimation algorithm assumes a nominal battery capacity. As a result, a bad battery can and will be detected by the method of the present invention if the number of full equivalent charges per time slot increases above a predefined threshold, which is dependent on the battery characteristics. This is illustrated in
The nominal state of charge of the battery can get derived from measuring the battery voltage and look-up of the battery charge state via a table, which contains the nominal discharge curve.
In a further embodiment of the method according to the present invention, the statistical data is only collect by the hearing device, i.e. the number of full equivalent charges are obtained within the hearing device, while the logic to differentiate between good and bad batteries does not reside in the hearing device but in an external device (not shown in the figures). When an external device is reading out the result, i.e. the number of full equivalent charges per time slot, it can be presented in the same manner as it has been described in connection with the embodiment of
In a further embodiment of the method according to the present invention, the hearing device will also comprise the decision logic for deciding if the number of equivalent charges is below a first threshold (indicating a good performance level of the battery), above at least a first threshold (e.g. a warning level indicating a mediocre performance level) or even above a second threshold (e.g. a “dead battery” level indicating a critical performance level). The evaluation result might then be presented to the user of the hearing device, to an audiologist or to a service personnel in an appropriate manner, such as an acoustical notification, a visual indication in a user control application (app), a fitting software or some other appropriate way.
Reference sign used in
| Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| PCT/EP2016/056033 | 3/18/2016 | WO | 00 |
| Publishing Document | Publishing Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| WO2017/157470 | 9/21/2017 | WO | A |
| Number | Name | Date | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7928735 | Huang | Apr 2011 | B2 |
| 20050046389 | Kim | Mar 2005 | A1 |
| 20050156571 | Inui et al. | Jul 2005 | A1 |
| 20070063675 | Walline et al. | Mar 2007 | A1 |
| 20090027056 | Huang | Jan 2009 | A1 |
| 20120049802 | Barsukov | Mar 2012 | A1 |
| 20120130660 | Neumeyer | May 2012 | A1 |
| 20140089692 | Hanafusa | Mar 2014 | A1 |
| 20140358194 | Vansickle | Dec 2014 | A1 |
| 20160064962 | Huang | Mar 2016 | A1 |
| Number | Date | Country |
|---|---|---|
| 2108972 | Oct 2009 | EP |
| 2151694 | Feb 2010 | EP |
| 2672731 | Dec 2013 | EP |
| 2908556 | Aug 2015 | EP |
| Entry |
|---|
| International Search Report and Written Opinion; Application PCT/EP2016/056033; Applicant: Sonova AG; Filing Date: Mar. 18, 2016; dated Dec. 6, 2016; 13 pages. |
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20190075404 A1 | Mar 2019 | US |
