Battery health monitoring for pulse load power supplies

A power supply circuit, for a pulsed load and comprising:

• a battery;
• an energy storage device, connected to an output of the power supply circuit and configured to provide periodic current pulses to the load at a repetition interval;
• a charger connected, at an input thereof, to the battery, and at an output thereof to the energy storage device, and configured to provide a charging current to the energy storage device;
• a charge controller, configured to control the charging current by controlling an operating frequency of the charger, and to determine an optimised charger operating frequency at which the energy storage device is recharged over the pulse interval;
• and
• a health monitor configured to at least one of:
• compare the optimised charger operating frequency with a threshold frequency and indicate an end-of-life state of the battery in response to the optimised charger operating frequency exceeding the threshold frequency;
• and compare a rate-of-change of the optimised charger operating frequency with a threshold rate-of-change and indicate an end-of-life state of the battery in response to the rate-of-change of the optimised charger operating frequency exceeding the threshold rate-of-change.