How to make the NRF9160 reduce power consumption？

RE: How to make the NRF9160 reduce power consumption？

Elfving — Tue, 19 Apr 2022 07:34:55 GMT

Hello again, and thanks for your patience during the Easter vacation.

[quote user="Hannibalhz"]I think their high power consumption problem is caused by the peripherals, they use the pm_device_state_set function to turn off the peripherals[/quote]

I believe this is correct.

Though keep in mind that the power consumption of multiple peripherals doesn't scale linearly. E.g., 1 UART alone could pull as much power as 3 UART and a 1 PWM. This is because it is the HF clock and the internal clock tree that is pulling the power, and not every peripheral by itself. So you won't necessarily see the power consumption decrease just from disabling one peripheral.

Do you know if there are any other peripherals active?

Regards,

Elfving

RE: How to make the NRF9160 reduce power consumption？

Hannibalhz — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 02:42:37 GMT

Dear Elfving

I think their high power consumption problem is caused by the peripherals, they use the pm_device_state_set function to turn off the peripherals, but this doesn't seem to take effect. Is this correct? Is there any other way to turn off peripherals？Please give me some good suggest.

Best regards.

RE: How to make the NRF9160 reduce power consumption？

Elfving — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 12:23:46 GMT

I wouldn't necessarily say that 400uA sounds like a lot if one or more UARTs or PWM are active. It depends on if you are using them continuously or just now and then. An active UART could pull 0.5mA by itself. You just have to make sure that the peripherals are disabled when they are not in use.

Regards,

Elfving

RE: How to make the NRF9160 reduce power consumption？

Elfving — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 11:02:34 GMT

Hi Wang, so sorry about the delay!

There are several things that could be looked into here.

First of all, there might be peripherals, LEDs, logging, etc. that haven't been disabled. You can take a look at our nRF Asset Tracker v2 and its low power overlay to see what we would recommend disabling/using for a similar application.

In order to get low power consumption in PSM you also rely on getting reasonable PSM timer values from the network, do you for instance know what TAU value you are requesting and what the network is giving you? Note that the network might not give you the values you are requesting. For more info I would recommend reading our whitepaper on Best Practices for IoT development (simply searching for the word 'power' there might give you some good tips) as well as this whitepaper on Energy Efficient IoT.

Regards,

Elfving