Increased Peak Advertising Current

[Justin]

While advertising I could see some increased current peaks on one of the three channels. Its random and is observed mostly at the first or last channel of advertising.

Any idea what could be the reason? Does the nearby scanning device affect the power consumption? I am using nordic nrf52832 chip. 

Attached are some screenshots that show an advertising sequence where I captured 3 larger peaks along with zoomed in views of each of those larger peaks.

[Kenneth]

Hi,

This is likely a central that is transmitting a scan request packet, and then the peripheral will reply with a scan response packet. This typically happen on 1 of the advertisement channels, but may also happen on more than 1 channel if there are more than 1 central nearby.

Best regards,
Kenneth

[Justin]

Kenneth said:

This is likely a central that is transmitting a scan request packet, and then the peripheral will reply with a scan response packet. This typically happen on 1 of the advertisement channels

Putting my setup into the anechoic chamber did eliminate the occasional larger advertising current peaks.

As a result, the larger peaks do appear to be linked to some device behavior related to scan requests coming from central devices.

 

But in that case I would expect a longer period of a Tx --> Rx --> Tx --> Rx current draw rather than a higher current draw.

Is my understanding correct?