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nRF51822 TEMP internal temperature sensor characteristic

I'm trying to use the internal temperature sensor of the nRF51 to know the die temperature. Its accuracy is specced as +/- 4 degC, even +/- 8 degC at the extremes. Does anyone know more properties of this uncertainty? Is it a fixed thing, that I can improve by calibrating an offset? Or is it noisy, something that I might filter out using multiple measurements?

Edit: See my own answer, the offset I measure is unusually large. Any thoughts where this might come from?

  • I mean to say that I would think a very cold die would have a smaller temp difference with its environment (since it gets cooled a lot), and a hot die would have a larger temperature difference since it loses less heat to the environment. There is no such effect in my measurements. EDIT: After talking to a hardware engineer, I understand that this is not how ICs work, but that there is a constant number of degrees per watt between environmental end die. The following point still holds though: Furthermore, if those 13 degrees are caused by the CPU heating the die, how would we explain the fact that out of 4 devices (identical hardware, identical software), 3 have about 13 degrees offset, and 1 has 9 degrees? While all devices respond very similar to external influences like sudden temperature changes?

  • What hardware are you using Bouke? earlier versions had a minor glitch with calibrating the TEMP sensor at factory for very very small number of devices (maybe the reason the 4th device is little off with the the other three), but that has been handled for newer hardware. Hopefully you will not see the difference in offsets with newer builds.

  • I did a repeat experiment, this time with each device sleeping for 20 seconds, then doing a measurement immediately after wakeup, and then communicating that data. The results look similar, but this time (same hardware) the offset is smaller, between 6 and 12 degrees. So perhaps the difference is caused by the die temperature after all...

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