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IS OPTICAL DVS THE ANSWER TO LONGER BATTERY LIFE IN WEARABLES?
KEY TAKEAWAYS
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There is a lot to love about our wearables, but constantly recharging isn’t one of them. What if we could squeeze more life out of the tiny batteries that power them? That’s the promise of optical DVS: delivering smart, context-aware energy management rather than brute-force, overvoltage for every scenario.
THE HIDDEN POWER DRAIN IN EVERY WEARABLE
Over the past decade, photoplethysmography (PPG) has revolutionized wearables—those blinking LEDs on your smartwatch that track heart rate, blood oxygen, and other vital signs by detecting light reflections from blood flow. As continuous monitoring becomes standard, the industry has fought aggressively to extend battery life with more efficient semiconductors and adaptive algorithms that minimize LED current.
But a critical inefficiency persists.
Most wearables use fixed-voltage rails designed for worst-case scenarios—maximum LED brightness during peak activity sensing under challenging conditions. Yet devices spend most of their operational life under far less challenging environments: resting heart rate monitoring, sleep tracking, low-ambient conditions. During these periods, that excess voltage headroom isn’t powering useful work—it’s dissipated as wasted energy.
Techniques were developed to minimize current consumption during these less challenging conditions but the voltage opportunity was missed—until now. Optical DVS adjusts voltage in real-time to match workload, reclaiming that wasted power.
PERFECT TIMING FOR OPTICAL DVS
The wearable healthcare market is growing rapidly. IDC reported that worldwide wearable device shipments reached 611.5 million units in 2025, growing 9.1% year-over-year.1 The global wearable technology market is projected to grow from $87.2 billion in 2025 to $240.4 billion by 2032, representing a CAGR of 14.7%.2 These devices are growing increasingly complex, adding new functionality that puts pressure on already limited battery space. More recently, we have seen the emergence of smaller form-factor devices, such as rings and patches, that have battery sizes an order of magnitude smaller than more traditional wearables. The need to utilize battery power wisely has never been greater.
THE DVS ADVANTAGE
By adopting a power management design that supports dynamic voltage scaling—where the supply voltage is tuned in real time based on actual current draw—systems can dramatically reduce wasted headroom. DVS enables the rail voltage to shrink along with demand, reducing power dissipation and improving overall efficiency.
This isn’t just theory. In practical wearable workloads—where LED pulses, sensor sampling, or radio bursts happen intermittently—DVS can deliver meaningful battery savings. For a device running continuously (24/7), those savings add up to multiple percentage points of improved battery retention over time. In some designs, that could translate to battery-life improvements measured in days over the life of the device.
THE DVS DIFFERENCE IS WORTH IT
Optical DVS can extend battery life across a wide range of LED-based applications, with the greatest gains seen when LEDs account for a larger share of total power consumption and when overall system current is lower. Even in moderate-use scenarios, the benefits are meaningful.
For example, when LEDs consume about 20% of the total power budget and the system operates at an average current of 30 mA:
- Green LED applications (e.g., heart rate monitoring): battery life can increase by approximately 5%
- Red/infrared LED applications (e.g., blood oxygen sensing): battery life can improve by nearly 10%
Such saving can be applied to increase the runtime of the battery. But they can equally be harvested to make more frequent measurements—for example, tracking SpO2 (peripheral capillary oxygen saturation, or blood oxygen saturation) more during sleep, thereby increasing the utility of the measurement.
STRATEGIC IMPLICATIONS FOR ENGINEERING AND PRODUCT LEADERSHIP
- Design for efficiency, not brute force: Rather than spec fixed-power rails at worst-case levels, integrate DVS-capable regulators early in the design cycle. This ensures power optimization without compromising performance when needed.
- Battery and form-factor constraints demand smarter power design: As the wearable market pushes toward thinner, more ergonomic devices—rings, patches, bands—battery capacity isn’t scaling. DVS lets you reclaim efficiency without increasing battery size or decreasing comfort.
- Competitive advantage and user retention: In a market where battery life is a differentiator, offering longer runtimes will resonate with end users. That’s a strong lever for product marketing and user experience.
OPTICAL DVS: TURNING WEARABLE POWER CHALLENGES INTO OPPORTUNITY
As wearable systems accumulate more functionality, the battery life of these systems will be challenged to support these added features that users expect. By reclaiming battery power that is currently being wasted in these systems, optical DVS will be a major ally in this struggle.
Future systems will not need to be constrained by the tyranny of worst-case scenarios but can dynamically adjust to provide just the amount of power that is needed. Not a penny more, not a penny less.
References
1 IDC, Wearable Devices Market Insights, 2026
2 Markets and Markets, Wearable Technology Market Size, Share and Trends, 2026
