Hello, I am developing with nRF5340 with my custom board. I observed a high current consumption when the network core is flashed with the ipc_radio image. I am developing with NCS v3.0.2. The current consumption measurement is conducted with the hello_world example for Thingy53 as the target hardware. Current is measured via PPK2.
For my project configuration prf.conf, I have:
CONFIG_LOG=n CONFIG_USE_SEGGER_RTT=n CONFIG_LOG_BACKEND_RTT=n CONFIG_LOG_BACKEND_UART=n CONFIG_RTT_CONSOLE=n CONFIG_STDOUT_CONSOLE=n CONFIG_UART_CONSOLE=n CONFIG_CONSOLE=n CONFIG_SERIAL=n CONFIG_PM_DEVICE=y CONFIG_PM=y CONFIG_PM_DEVICE_RUNTIME=y
And for the ipc_radio's prj.conf placed under sysbuild/ipc_radio, I have:
CONFIG_BT_BUF_EVT_RX_SIZE=68 CONFIG_BT_BUF_EVT_RX_COUNT=4 CONFIG_BT_BUF_ACL_RX_SIZE=27 CONFIG_BT_BUF_ACL_TX_SIZE=27 CONFIG_BT_EXT_ADV=y CONFIG_BT_EXT_ADV_MAX_ADV_SET=2 CONFIG_BT_CTLR_ADV_DATA_LEN_MAX=251 CONFIG_BT_CTLR_ADV_EXT=y CONFIG_BT_CTLR_TX_PWR_DYNAMIC_CONTROL=y CONFIG_BT_MAX_CONN=1 CONFIG_BT_CTLR_PHY_2M=y # Disable or enable antenna front end module CONFIG_MPSL_FEM=n CONFIG_LOG=n CONFIG_SERIAL=n CONFIG_CONSOLE=n CONFIG_UART_CONSOLE=n CONFIG_USE_SEGGER_RTT=n CONFIG_UART_NRFX=n CONFIG_PM_DEVICE=y CONFIG_PM_DEVICE_RUNTIME=y CONFIG_PM=y
Finally for the Kconfig.sysbuild, I have:
source "${ZEPHYR_BASE}/share/sysbuild/Kconfig"
config NRF_DEFAULT_IPC_RADIO
default y
When using hello_world without any modifications but only disable console and serial, I have a current profile like shown in the below figure. This is again, with empty network core. This gives me an average current of 250 uA.
However, when using hello_world with the above configurations, I have this current profile as shown in the next figure. This gives me an average current of 3.36 mA although I did not call bt_enable() at all in my code.
So simply enabling ipc_radio image on network core without actually use BT function is giving this much current consumption increase. Is this the expected behaviour? If not, what could be the optimisations to reduce this current consumption? I understand when both cores are enabled, there is this internal communication between the two core, is this the reason?
