Component-wise Power Estimation of Electrical Devices Using Thermal Imaging

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new thermal imaging-based method for estimating the power consumption of individual electronic components on a heterogeneous circuit board, achieving around 10% accuracy with low-resolution cameras.

Contribution

It presents a novel approach that does not require high-emissivity coatings and can work with low-resolution infrared cameras for component-wise power estimation.

Findings

Achieves about 10% mean estimation error for powers above 300mW.

Works with heterogeneous materials without special coatings.

Utilizes segmentation methods for reliable thermal image analysis.

Abstract

This paper presents a novel method to estimate the power consumption of distinct active components on an electronic carrier board by using thermal imaging. The components and the board can be made of heterogeneous material such as plastic, coated microchips, and metal bonds or wires, where a special coating for high emissivity is not required. The thermal images are recorded when the components on the board are dissipating power. In order to enable reliable estimates, a segmentation of the thermal image must be available that can be obtained by manual labeling, object detection methods, or exploiting layout information. Evaluations show that with low-resolution consumer infrared cameras and dissipated powers larger than 300mW, mean estimation errors of 10% can be achieved.