Today we’re looking at the power current consumption of a BLE beacon based on a nRF51-series chip from Nordic Semiconductor. This is a typical IoT device powered by a coin cell battery.

We’re testing this beacon both on at high and at low battery voltage to see the effect of the built-in DC/DC converter. Batteries exposed to low temperature will typically have a lower cell voltage and the voltage will also drop as the battery is being discharged. The lower the battery voltage drops the higher the current consumption gets, but the average power consumption is more or less constant.

When validating your design you want to run the test both at the highest and the lowest expected battery voltages.