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51802 debug mode consuming less power?

Hi community, I'm running a 51802 on my custom board with no other parts on it, except for some buttons and leds directly connected to GPIO, and a DC/DC converter which feed the 51802 with 1.8V power directly. I'm running a custom 2.4G protocol with neither softdevices, nor Gazell lib, which keep 16M clock always running.

Now when I try to optimize power, I've found some interesting thing that I can't find an explanation. I measure current before the DC/DC, so the absolute current read is not so relevant. The cpu is running the main loop steadily merely check for GPIO buttons, not much radio activities except sending a heartbeat packet every second,

the current read 2.21mA.

But if I reset the board to debug mode(with jlink plugged),

the current read 0.96mA.

I've checked this many times to make sure, as long as power is on, the consumption keeps the low state, and there seems no difference of the functionality of the 51802.

So my question is: why in debug mode, the power consumption reduced to about 44% of the normal state? what's changed inside the chip?

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  • Hi,

    I have now tested the hex you uploaded on a nRF51-DK.

    I measure 1.56 mA in regular mode, and 2.3mA in debug mode. After 30 seconds I get a Advertising timeout event, and the current goes up to 4.6 mA. This could be an issue with entering system OFF mode.

    Could it be that you are measuring the current from other components on your board? Have you tried testing with 3 Volt?

    Note that since you are running the chip in low voltage mode(under 2 Volt), DEC2 shall be connected to VDD. Have you done this on your custom board?

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