Idle power consumption in nrf5340 when Thread Enabled

RE: Idle power consumption in nrf5340 when Thread Enabled

Jared — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 14:34:54 GMT

[quote user="DavidGeorge"]

We are using the k_timer module provided by the kernel in the application, but it is not configured for 4 seconds. Will this module contribute the power consumption in idle period?

Other than this RTC is also enabled. But ticks and other interrupts are disabled, only the counter value is used.

[/quote]

By timer I meant the calibration of the RC oscillator which is used by the timers. Can you try to change the calibration interval as suggested by my colleague Vidar here and see if correlates with the current plot?

[quote user="DavidGeorge"]Just a doubt in this, even if we disabled the TFM logging, the current consumption was around 48uA, When GPIO is also disabled the reduction was observed. Is UART peripheral is initialized even if the TFM logging is disabled?[/quote]

Could be that some of the pins that used by the UART is not configured to default which can cause some of them to float causing excessive current. I'm not 100% sure on this, but a way to confirm it is to check the PIN_CNF register for each GPIO peripheral and confirm that every pin is configured to the default value of Input, Input buffer disconnected, no pull, standard drive and SENSE disabled.

regards

Jared

RE: Idle power consumption in nrf5340 when Thread Enabled

George — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 10:25:31 GMT

[quote userid="73165" url="~/f/nordic-q-a/104812/idle-power-consumption-in-nrf5340-when-thread-enabled/454629"]Do you configure any timers in your application?[/quote]

We are using the k_timer module provided by the kernel in the application, but it is not configured for 4 seconds. Will this module contribute the power consumption in idle period?

Other than this RTC is also enabled. But ticks and other interrupts are disabled, only the counter value is used.

[quote userid="73165" url="~/f/nordic-q-a/104812/idle-power-consumption-in-nrf5340-when-thread-enabled/454629"]That could be due to the RX IDLE current for the UART peripheral[/quote]

Just a doubt in this, even if we disabled the TFM logging, the current consumption was around 48uA, When GPIO is also disabled the reduction was observed. Is UART peripheral is initialized even if the TFM logging is disabled?

RE: Idle power consumption in nrf5340 when Thread Enabled

Jared — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 10:13:06 GMT

[quote user="DavidGeorge"]If any one of the configuration is enabled the idle period consumption is ramped up to 40-50uA. The TFM logging is associated with the UART1. What can be the reason of this value?[/quote]

That could be due to the RX IDLE current for the UART peripheral

[quote user="DavidGeorge"]Currently in the idle period we are observing a current spike of 4mA at every 4 seconds interval. What can be the cause of this current spikes?[/quote]

Do you configure any timers in your application?

regards

Jared

RE: Idle power consumption in nrf5340 when Thread Enabled

George — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 05:09:50 GMT

Hi Jared ,

We were able to reduce this consumption to 8uA in the idle period by disabling the TFM Logging and GPIO. Nothing is changed in the configurations for thread network.

If any one of the configuration is enabled the idle period consumption is ramped up to 40-50uA. The TFM logging is associated with the UART1. What can be the reason of this value?

Currently in the idle period we are observing a current spike of 4mA at every 4 seconds interval. What can be the cause of this current spikes?

RE: Idle power consumption in nrf5340 when Thread Enabled

Jared — Thu, 26 Oct 2023 13:04:46 GMT

Hi,

50 µA in sleep? What else do you have on your custom board?

Do you have a devkit you could try to repeat this on and see if you measure the same using the same measurement setup?

regards

Jared

RE: Idle power consumption in nrf5340 when Thread Enabled

George — Wed, 25 Oct 2023 13:25:10 GMT

Hi Jared,

I have a Thread border router and I had done a test with the Thread CLI sample. With this sample also I got similar result . Power consumption was around 50uA. These are the steps I followed :

Image was build with configuration files : "overlay-ci.conf and overlay-low_power.conf" and device tree overlay file : "low_power.overlay"
Flashed the custom board, and provided the following details
1. Thread PanID
2. Thread Channel
3. Thread Network Key.
4. PollPeriod was set to 1000ms
5. Mode was set to child
To start the thread following commands were used
1. "ot ifconfig up"
2. "ot thread start"
When device joined the Border Router, UART got disconnected and the power consumption was measured as 47uA

Am I missing any steps in the test?

RE: Idle power consumption in nrf5340 when Thread Enabled

Jared — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 12:57:15 GMT

Hi,

Do you have a Thread router? Maybe you could try the Thread:CLI sample to verify your custom board, it implements Sleep End Device type.

[quote user=""]RTC peripheral is enabled without any tick, capture compare property. Only counter is used for keeping track of time.[/quote]

If you disable this feature, for example by commenting all code that use the RTC. What current do you get?

What other peripherals are you using?

What else do you have on the custom board? Does the nRF5340 communicate with any other device on the custom board is any serial connected?

regards
Jared

RE: Idle power consumption in nrf5340 when Thread Enabled

George — Fri, 20 Oct 2023 11:44:08 GMT

Hi Jared,

[quote userid="73165" url="~/f/nordic-q-a/104812/idle-power-consumption-in-nrf5340-when-thread-enabled/451231"]are you sure that the current is drawn exclusively by the nRF5340 and not something else on your board?[/quote]

We had done a small testing by just running a simple application, without using any features. Here we were able to observe a current consumption around 8-7uA.

[quote userid="73165" url="~/f/nordic-q-a/104812/idle-power-consumption-in-nrf5340-when-thread-enabled/451231"]Is it avg current or peak?[/quote]

This is the average current observed.

Adding some Images of the current trace( The second Image is a zoomed image, After a peak the raising of current till 42uA).

Regards,

George

RE: Idle power consumption in nrf5340 when Thread Enabled

Jared — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 09:27:40 GMT

Hi,

48 µA is a bit strange as there isn't anything that comes to mind that would use exactly this. Most peripherals will use more than this number, are you sure that the current is drawn exclusively by the nRF5340 and not something else on your board?

Is it avg current or peak? Do you have a PPK2 that you can use to record and share a current trace with me?

regards

Jared