Does BLE have lower current consumption than ESB?

[Johnson]

I need to setup a nRF51 dongle as a transmitter and a nRF51 beacon as a receiver. The transmitter will send a byte every 7.8 ms (128 times per second).

I am wondering whether to use ESB or BLE to minimise the current consumption.

From my reading of the specs, the RX mode for ESB always consume 13 mA.

For BLE, I assume connection mode and the current consumption is about 1.7 ms for 2.5 ms (using the suggestion from this post). If the current is 0 in the remaining 5.3 ms, the average current would be about 0.5 mA.

It looks like BLE can achieve lower current consumption.

My current calculation is shown below. Please confirm if it's correct or not.

Duration (us)	Stage	Current(uA)	    duration * current

1500	            B	        1105.1	        1657650
500	                E	        1038.1	        519050
500	                H	        4005.1	        2002550
-----------------------------------------------------------------
2500                                                 4179250
Average current = 4179250/2500 = 1672 uA

[Ole Bauck]

As you said the receiver has to listen all the time and therefore it is more power efficient using BLE. If it had been the other way around, ESB would be a better choice.

I calculated a current consumption of about 1.3mA with the parameters you gave me.

Note: The connection interval (minimum time between sending packets) in BLE is set in units of 1.25ms, so the closest transmit interval will be 7.5ms which is also the lowest you can get with BLE.