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What is the IDLE current consumption on nRF52832 ??

Daewoong Kim

Dear all developers,

I'm currently studying about nRF52832 SoC and prepare to develop low current BLE device.

Before starting, I want to know about idle current consumption on nRF52832. I've already read

several questions on this forum and nRF52832's PS(product specification) v1.4, but i'm still wondering about this issue.

First, as i attached below, in 7.2.1 of PS, CPU current has mA units (e.g. CPU current, running from flash, cache disabled,

DCDC 3V = 3.9 mA). Does it means that CPU consumes the 3.9 mA per unit times? I don't understand what those current

value indicates.

If the above current (e.g. 3.9 mA) stands for, minimum current consumption on nRF52832 should be higher than 3mA.

However, many low power applications mentioned in this forum aim at much lower application (< 200 uA). 

Also, in 18.3.1 in PS, it saids that "When the system enters System ON mode, it will, by default, reside in the low power

sub-power mode" and in ultra-low power (mode?), current consumption level is specified in 17.1.1 lower than 2 uA.

Therefore, I don't know which information is right. 

Actually, in this Onlie Power Profiler ( https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/power/ ), calculating current consumption

in several BLE scenarios, Idle current is fixed as 2.0 uA. Then, is that a correct figure?. If this figure is correct, if I use

the nRF52832 chip for advertising a few bytes, it could be operating under 100 uA. Does it make sense ... ?

If not, this Power Profiler just indicate the current consumption used in radio module ? (excluding other peripherals or even CPU)

Thank you for reading, and  please reply on my questions, experts Slight smile

- Daewoong Kim

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  • +1

    Hi,

    The CPU current is the run current of the CPU. Ideally the CPU will be in idle/sleep mode most of the time. The system ON current is the base current when the CPU is in idle mode. In this mode, chip can wake up on events from all enabled peripherals, for instance RTC/TIMER/etc. This mode can be used together with softdevice to maintain BLE advertising and connections. These currents are instantaneous currents, and depend on which mode the chip is in.

    The current you see in the Online Power profiler indicate the average current of the chip, for a given task. The main contributions to the average current is the RADIO currents, when transmitting and receiving, and the CPU current when softdevice is preparing/processing packets.

    Best regards,
    Jørgen

Reply
  • +1

    Hi,

    The CPU current is the run current of the CPU. Ideally the CPU will be in idle/sleep mode most of the time. The system ON current is the base current when the CPU is in idle mode. In this mode, chip can wake up on events from all enabled peripherals, for instance RTC/TIMER/etc. This mode can be used together with softdevice to maintain BLE advertising and connections. These currents are instantaneous currents, and depend on which mode the chip is in.

    The current you see in the Online Power profiler indicate the average current of the chip, for a given task. The main contributions to the average current is the RADIO currents, when transmitting and receiving, and the CPU current when softdevice is preparing/processing packets.

    Best regards,
    Jørgen

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