Q. Can I use any Nordic ARM M0 sleep modes while peripheral is advertising (to reduce system power consumption) ?

[ptustin]

Hello,

I am using a nrf51422 in my work. I am focusing on reducing system power consumption as much as possible.

Q. When a peripheral (server) starts advertising (and while it is advertising), are there any ARM M0 low power modes that I could be using to reduce the overall power consumption of my board ?

I know the Nordic softdevice runs on the ARM M0 but I’m wondering whether the system is architected in such a way that the radio can continue to advertise until a response is received, WITHOUT the ARM M0 doing too much.

Thanks for your consideration,

Phil

[RK]

The entire design of the softdevice is architected around using the lowest power possible. So just use the sd_app_event_wait() function in  your main loop and the CPU will sleep as much as possible, the clock will be off as much as possible, the radio will be off as much as possible and it will draw the least amount of current it can. It already uses the M0 low power modes (basically WFE) whilst keeping the BLE advertising and connection going. 

The only choice really left to make is whether you want constant latency or low power mode, and if I remember correctly, lowest power  is the default. 

So just use the softdevice as shown in the examples and you will get lowest power bluetooth. .