Is the BLE power efficient while it's always connected to central device ?

RE: Is the BLE power efficient while it's always connected to central device ?

Tizana — Sat, 05 Nov 2016 17:32:13 GMT

thx Jørgen,

after i calculate the current consumption using the excel i figure out that the power consumption still low even it's always connected.

thx for all the information.

RE: Is the BLE power efficient while it's always connected to central device ?

Tizana — Sat, 05 Nov 2016 17:30:15 GMT

when i first designed my board i was planning to use the antenna once a minute by sending data to the phone. but later i figure out that to keep the connection between the peripheral and the central device the peripheral has to send some package periodically to the central device, which i wasn't expected to be like that at the beggining.

RE: Is the BLE power efficient while it's always connected to central device ?

awneil — Fri, 04 Nov 2016 10:31:55 GMT

What, exactly, do you mean by "power efficient"? Compared to what?

RE: Is the BLE power efficient while it's always connected to central device ?

Jørgen Holmefjord — Fri, 04 Nov 2016 08:18:14 GMT

Hi,

Yes, BLE is power efficient when in a connection. You can configure your connection parameters to allow the devices to sleep for a long time between each radio transmitt/receive. This means that even though the radio consume some current when in use, the average current consumption will be low.

There is a comprehensive guide about nRF51 current consumption in the tutorials section. For nRF52, we have a online power profiler where you can calculate the BLE current consumption from your settings. Unfortunatelu, we don't have such a tool for nRF51, so notice that the consumption of the nRF51 devices will be somewhat higher. The community user @nabjac has created an Excel sheet that can be used to calculate current consumption of nRF51 devices. Notice that I have not tested this tool, and cannot guaranetee it's correctness.

Best regards,

Jørgen