Battery life calculation for NRF52 and NRF51(Beacon kit)

[Usman Rashid]

Hi,

Is there any battery life calculations for NRF52 and NRF51 (Beacon)?

For example: if TX power of NRF52 is 0 dBm and it broadcast every 5 seconds ? Or with any other random settings.

[Sigurd]

Hi,

You can estimate the current consumed by the nRF52 using the nRF52 Online Power Profiler. Based on this and the capacity of your battery you can calculate the battery life as:

Battery Life [hours] = Battery Capacity [mAh] / Device Consumption [mA] * 0.70

where the factor of 0.7 makes allowances for external factors which can affect battery life.

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Using 0 dBm, TX payload 15 bytes, voltage 3 and BLE interval 5000 ms you will get a total average current at 4.2 uA. If you use a CR2032 coin cell battery with a 220 mAh capacity we can calculate the battery life as:

220 mAh / 0.0042 mA * 0.7 = 36666.66 hours =  4.18 years

[Madhav Aggarwal]

Hello, is there any way to calculate the CR2032's life practically without waiting for actual 4.18 years as we are also using NRF52 as beacon in our product and want to assure our customers that it will last atleast the theoretical time? 

[Sigurd]

I would recommend that you measure the current consumption on your custom device. For this I would recommend the Nordic PPK.