nRF51422 ANT power consumption too high

[AnnaGr]

Hello,

I am having trouble with my power consumption. My Chip is using 1mA during run-time. It seems to work right when I put it to sleep (~0.5 µA). I am only programming the chip with ANT and using the S210 (untouched by me). What could be the reason and wht can I do to change this?

[MC]

Do you have UART, I2C or SPI bus enabled in active mode? The HW module for them, uses from 700uA - 1mA of current. The solution is to disable the module and only enable it when you need it.

[AnnaGr]

I am using UART in active mode to communicate. How can I disable the module during communication (between the messages)?

[MC]

You could do this:

NRF_UART0->ENABLE = 1;
/* send message*/
NRF_UART0->ENABLE = 0;

This is similar to what I've done in my case, where I was using I2C for reading some sensors. You didn't say what is your expected frequency of your messages, if you have a lot of them, then this kind of solution won't bring much benefit to you. But on the other hand, if you have just a small number of messages, this kind of solution will make a lot difference in current consumption.