need some power planning guidance

we have a device whos active time will be 5 minutes once a month 

we have done some preliminary work on saving power. 

the device scans for the app, before advertising. 

the app advertises its presence, then scans for the devices in a room, after waiting for some amount of time

when the app is done, it goes away, and the device stops advertising, until the next time the app shows up 

now, we want the 'delay' from app on to devices detected to be 'low', responsive, guess 15 seconds too long, 5 seconds about right.. 
as is typical, the device might have stopped active scanning just before the app appears., so the delay should not be more than 5 seconds.
the app currently scans for 15 seconds, and stops early if it hears no new devices. over a 2 second cycle

but wake up from sleep takes longer to get scanning up and running again ..

but 99.9999 % of the time there is nothing to scan. 

want to run off battery, full power demand is between 150-200ma. for 50% of the 5 minute period. 

scan power demand is 80ma. 

but I cant get wakeup from positive scan (wake on lan type approach), only have BLE available 

any thoughts welcomed..  we will be using the 52833 and 52840 devices. 

  • Hi,

    I did some calculations.

    Even the longest advertising packet (31 bytes) spends only 376 us in TX on each advertising channel, at each advertising event. With a 5 second advertising interval and 32 devices, you would in total occupy each advertising channel at less than a quarter of a percent of the time (0.24 %.) Split that interval in four, for 4 advertisements every 5 second time span, and you are still at only one percent for the 32 devices combined. That should work fine for all use cases, maybe with the exception of extremely constrained systems.

    Since power consumption also depends on voltage level, regulator, LF clock source, and TX power, consumption numbers may vary. Nevertheless, with maximum (31 bytes) advertising payloads at 1250 ms advertising interval, with standard settings (3V, DCDC, external crystal for LF clock, and 0 dB TX power), you get for the nRF52840 an average current around 14 uA. A combination of the most power hungry settings ends at around 40 uA. Ref. the Online Power Profiler for Bluetooth LE.

    Regards,
    Terje

  • I agree that advertising full time might reduce the battery requirements..  but we have a different business requirement.. 

  • Hi,

    I think I have shared all of my thoughts at this point. Please let me know if there are still unanswered questions.

    Regards,
    Terje

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