Advertising consume more power compared to connection?

[Ziyao Zhou]

Hi,

I am sending out same payload through ADV packet and BLE connection packet, I notice the ADV consume more power compared to connection one,which is quite strange.

The result I have is here, is this correct? What is the reason, thank you so much!

[Turbo J]

Radio on-time is a bit shorter in the "connected" case if - and only if- there is no or very little data to exchange.

Remember that connectable advertizer has to listen to scan request or connect attempts after each advertizement, so the radio will spend some time in RX mode.

[Sigurd Hellesvik]

In addition to Jörgs great answer, you can also have a look at the Online Power Profiler, which shows detailed graphs of how the nRF uses Power. Here you can compare Connected and Advertising state.

[Ziyao Zhou]

Hi,

I am using the ADV that is not connectable, My thought when using the ADV packet to send data, the power will be lower than connection data transfer.

[Sigurd Hellesvik]

In the Online Power profiler, you can see how Advertising (TX Only) compares to connection (Peripheral). How does the difference there look?

[Jakob Ruhe]

I see. If I remember things correctly, this is kind of expected.

When using Legacy Advertising the Peripheral transmits 3 packets each period, one on each of the 3 primary advertising channels.

When using Extended Advertising 1 extra packet is transmitted in each period, so 4 in total.

For a Connection, if there is no data to be exchanged, only 1 packet has to be sent by the peripheral in each Connection Event (it also has to receive one from the Central first). In addition to this, by setting the parameter Latency to a nonzero value, the Peripheral is allowed to skip Connection Events, and can therefore save even more energy.