Zigbee power consumption

[Gueston]

Hi,

I'm measuring the power consumption on our BLE+Zigbee device.

After the zigbee device is commsioned, it uses an average of 600uA of current, which seems pretty high. I already enabled the sleepy behavior like this:

    zb_set_rx_on_when_idle(ZB_FALSE);
     

#if ! defined DISABLE_POWER_CONSUMPTION_OPTIMIZATION
    /* If sleepy behaviour is enabled, power off unused RAM to save maximum energy */
    if (ZB_PIBCACHE_RX_ON_WHEN_IDLE() == ZB_TRUE)
    {
        zigbee_power_down_unused_ram();
    }

See below the power usage with sleepy behavior:

If I totally disable the Zigbee stack, it uses average of 4.65uA:

I assume this +/-600uA increase is not normal for Zigbee.

Can you please suggest how to lower this power consumption?

[Gueston]

I just figured out that wireshark is not exporting the decrypted packages.

The network key is:

[Key: df159b023ed72c599a7f78dad6dc04d9]

[Marte Myrvold]

Hi,

The end device sends continuous End Device Timeout Requests to the coordinator. There are no packets from the coordinator in the sniffer log, so I cannot see whether it responds to the requests, but I would assume that it does not since the end device continues sending them.

The request looks correct, so there should not be an issue there.

What are you using as the coordinator? Can you also get a sniffer log that includes packets from the coordinator? Start the sniffer before the end device joins the network so you get the Node Descriptor Response from the coordinator in the sniffer log.

Another thing you can try is to use the light coordinator or CLI agent as the coordinator and see if there is any difference in current consumption on the end device.

Best regards,
Marte

[Gueston]

Hi,

I think these End Device Timeout Requests is the polling (it's a sleepy end device) rate right? Because thats set at 500ms and I see that these requests are approx. 500ms delayed.

But I think this extra traffic is generated by the Data Request packages on the IEEE 802.15.4 protocol. What does that mean?

[Marte Myrvold]

Hi,

No, End Device Timeout Request is not the polling. The Data Request is the polling.

End Device Timeout Requests are sent to inform the end device's parent of the end device's timeout requirements. This should only be sent once unless the end device does not receive an End Device Timeout Response from the parent. Here you can see the expected behavior when the end device joins the network. I have marked the request and response:

Best regards,
Marte

[Gueston]

So it's more related to the coordinator that it doesn't send this response?