nRF5340-DK Low Power Modes

[Portilha]

Hello everyone,

I'm working with the nRF5340-DK, aiming to achieve the lowest possible power consumption. From what I have read in some posts, I understand that this board should be able to reach consumption levels around 3 to 5 mA. In my setup, I'm using an SMU to power the board (through the P22 connector) and measure current. I've also set the nRF-only mode using the onboard switch to minimize MCU interface consumption. However, my current consumption is around 20 mA, which seems quite high for a chip described as ultra-low-power in the datasheet.

In my proj.conf I have disabled logging to reduce consumption:

CONFIG_LOG=n

CONFIG_SERIAL=n

And in my device tree overlay I have disabled some unused peripherals:

&adc {

status = "disabled";

};

&pwm0 {

status = "disabled";

};

&qspi {

status = "disabled";

};

&uart2 {

status = "disabled";

};

If helpful, I can provide current consumption graphs from the SMU software.

I'm wondering if there are additional configurations or APIs that would allow the board to enter a deep sleep mode, waking periodically to further reduce power consumption. I’ve noticed that Zephyr has APIs for managing low-power modes, but I’m unable to enable CONFIG_HAS_PM in proj.conf, which seems necessary for these functions.

Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

[Einar Thorsrud]

Hi,

Are we talking about idle current consumption here? If so, I assume you mean uA (micro ampere) where you write mA? If so, 20 uA is a high idle current consumption number, but it is about what I woudl expect if you have a GPIOTE interrupt pin enabled. Could that be the case? If that is the case, you can reduce power consumption by using GPIOTE PORT event as described in this post.