Pulse charge/ discharge is actually a kind of periodic current square wave. It’s well-known for Lead-acid applications, and numerous researches and practices have proven that both the charging efficiency as well as cycle life can be significantly improved using pulse function. Pulse charge/ discharge is also widely used to assess battery characteristics by observing voltage change in pulse duration. Moreover, pulse discharge can be used to simulate the loading of DC power device, such as camera flash or mobile phone communication load. Among all current pulse charge/ discharge tests, the Intel Turbo Boost and the GSM are the two most common industry testing patterns.

While evaluating pulse current wave form, rising time, falling time, overshoot and undershoot are four critical indicators (see figure 5). For optimized pulse functions, all indicators should be close to zero. However, in real-world practice, due to bandwidth limitation of control systems, the wave form gets affected and then distorted easily. To deliver the most accurate testing patterns, the Chen Tech solution minimizes rising and falling time, without activating overshoot and undershoot. The minimum rising/ falling time for current under 5A is less than 100μS, and for current under 20A is less than 300μS.