nRF52832 Periodic Current Spike into VDD Between BLE Advertisements

[dgorshteyn]

Hello,

We are using an nRF52832 (silicon REV C) microcontroller and we see periodic current spikes in between BLE advertisements... our power consumption is higher than projected for our system idle mode because of these current spikes.  See below captures of the periodic spikes between BLE advertisements with a smaller decoupling cap used in the first case and a larger decoupling cap used in the second capture.

What can be causing these idle-mode current spikes?  Some posts on the website suggest something about the DC/DC converter operating in 'refresh mode'?  Correct me if I'm wrong but I think I read that this is a feature of the revB silicon and not the revC that we are using... is there any other root cause for this behavior?

Thanks,

Dennis

[Stian Røed Hafskjold]

Hi, these spikes are most likely refresh mode spikes. It's a feature of all the chips in the nRF52 series, including all revisions.

The second plot looks like periodic LFRC calibration.