RAK4631 power consumption

WisBlock
#1

Hi,

I have RAK4631 module on a RAK19007 base board and I’m getting higher power consumption than expected. With nRF52840 and sx1262 both in sleep mode, average power consumption is still ~200uA (image attached). There are these 2.5mA spikes and I’m not sure where it’s coming from. I also tried another base board RAK19011, got the same results, so it seems like it’s coming from RAK4631.

No peripherals enabled on nRF52, SPI is deinitialized after configuring the sx1262, CPU is definitely is sleep mode.

Sx1262 configured as proposed: setup DIO2 to control the antenna switch, DIO3 to control the TCXO power supply and to use it’s DCDC regulator and not the LDO. Then put to sleep, cold start or warm start, makes no difference.

I’m out of ideas, any suggestions?

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#2

Welcome to the forum @sefermemic

Arduino IDE based code or RUI3 based code?
What is your application? Are you running one of our examples or your own code?

Any other WisBlock module on the RAK19007?

#3

Thank you,

None of those two, we’re just using Nordic SDK. We have our own code, for the moment we don’t need LoRa so we’re disabling it completely, just trying to get the lowest power consumption in sleep mode.

We have UWB and accelerometer as well, they both add ~120uA each when connected to the base board, also both configured in sleep modes. But that’s another thing, for now we’re trying to at least get the RAK4631 power consumption down.

Is it expected that each WisBlock has some extra current draw? We had a previous hardware with the same accelerometer, UWB module and nRF52, same configuration, same code, and the power consumption was much lower. Each of these should draw only a few uA in their sleep modes.

#4

We do not have experience with the Nordic SDK,

I know I can get a RAK4631 on a WisBlock Base Board (not the real low power environment) down to ~40uA when using the open source Arduino BSP which has FreeRTOS running.
No idea where your spikes are coming from.

Setup of the SX1262 is correct.