can i use doubler circuit for power supply to nRF52832 chip?

[vishal]

Hello sir,

I am develop us product using nRF52832 chip on DK board use S132 soft device and its working well fine. So now we are designing hardware PCB of my product for the same due to size restriction i want to use doubler circuit using MCP1640 chip. Can i use this for powering the my product. I am using simple 1.5V AA battery and convert 1.5V into 3V using doubler. So my question is can i use this circuit and add in my PCB designing. I am giving output of doubler circuit is 3V directly to the nRF52832 chip of VDD. can you suggest me any protection component with value (diode or capacitor) between power supply and nRF52832 chip VDD.

Thanks in advance....

[MartinBL]

I can't see why this shouldn't work. However, the efficiency of the converter isn't very good around the typical nRF52 current range (less than 100uA). In this range it seems like you can expect less than 60% efficiency:

The quiescent current at 19uA is also relatively high compared to a typical current consumption of an nRF5 application.

Wikipedia says an AA battery typically has a 400-900 mAh capacity. Considering the voltage, a rough estimate of the energy available in a poor AA battery is 400 mAh * 1.5V = 600 mWh. (Probably lower because of battery discharge curves etc.) A good coin cell battery on the other hand, might have a capacity of e.g. 220 mAh * 3V = 660 mWh.

Furthermore, since the converter wastes about 40-50% of the battery capacity and has a fairly high quiescent current, it might actually be worth considering a coin cell battery. A poor AA battery stores about the same energy as a good coin cell, but since half the energy might be wasted in the converter you might actually be better off with a coin cell and no converter. It might save you some PCB real estate and cut cost too.

But you know your application better than me, and the best, if not the only, way to find the optimal solution is to make a prototype and measure it yourself.

[MartinBL]

Let us continue here: devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../