Question about ESB Power Consumption at Different PHY Data Rates

[Ziyao Zhou]

I have observed that when using the ESB protocol at maximum throughput, the measured power consumption decreases as the PHY data rate increases: 4 Mbps consumes less power than 2 Mbps, and 2 Mbps consumes less power than 1 Mbps.

Could you help explain the reason behind this behavior?

[Hung Bui]

Hi Zhou, 

Ok, so the power measurement was measured under continuous max throughput text I assume ? 
In that case you may need to measure the radio active time. You can do this by profiling the power consumption. This way you can find much time the radio is utilized and see if you have optimized the application or not. 
You can use a PPK2 for this purpose. 

My suspicion is that the buffer was not filled quick enough, so on 4Mbps it has some idle time that reduce the throughput and the power consumption.