This section demonstrates how Nordic PMICs, such as nPM2100 and nPM1300/4, provide more than just voltage regulation and battery charging. These devices integrate system management features that help you design reliable and energy-efficient battery-powered products. It shows how Ship mode and Hibernate mode help minimize standby current and extend battery lifetime, especially in device applications that spend long periods in storage or deep sleep. It also shows how watchdog and boot monitoring features improve the system robustness by enabling automatic recovery from firmware faults or failed startup conditions.
Finally, we will explore the role of the battery fuel gauge. It estimates the battery’s state and remaining runtime with minimal power overhead. This allows you to accurately track available energy and design systems with more predictable battery lifetime.
Why PMIC system features matter
In many embedded products, the MCU is responsible for system control, while the PMIC provides power rails and charging. However, relying solely on the MCU for power management may create challenges.
Potential challenges might be, for example:
The MCU hangs due to firmware faults.
A device remains unused for months before the first activation.
A battery-powered product needs to sleep for long periods with minimal current consumption.
Startup failures leave a product permanently stuck in a non-functional state.
Nordic PMICs help address these challenges by providing system-level supervision and power control directly within the PMIC.
Ship mode
Many products are shipped with the battery already installed. Without proper power management, even a small standby current could slowly drain the battery before user even turn the device on.
The Ship mode solves this problem.
When the Ship mode is enabled:
The PMIC disconnects or disables all the supply rails.
Quiescent current is reduced to an extremely low level.
The system remains inactive until a defined wake event occurs.
Typical wake events include:
Button press
Charger insertion
External wake-up signal
Why this matters for nPM2100
The nPM2100 is designed specifically for primary battery applications, where every nanoamp matters.
One of its key features is its extremely low Ship mode current of ~35 nA:
This allows products to remain in storage for very long periods with minimal battery loss.
If you are designing long-life devices, Ship mode allows you to ship products with the battery installed without sacrificing shelf life. This ensures your device reaches users with the battery still nearly full, improving the overall user experience.
Hibernate mode in nPM2100
While the Ship mode is ideal for long-term storage, many devices need to wake periodically to perform tasks. In such cases, the system must remain in deep sleep while still supporting predictable wake-up events.
Hibernate mode in the nPM2100 enables ultra-low-power operation with controlled and fast wake-up, making it ideal for periodic sensing and low-duty-cycle wireless applications.
Wake-up from the Hibernate mode can occur through one of the following:
Wake-up timer
SHPHLD pin (external trigger)
Two Hibernate modes are available:
Hibernate – BOOST operates in ultra-low-power mode and LDOSW remains available, allowing limited system functionality. This mode is suitable for 1.5V batteries, like alkaline (for example, AA/AAA, LR44) and silver oxide (for example, SR44).
~250 nA with SHPHLD pin wake-up
~320 nA with wake-up timer
Hibernate_PT (pass-through) – BOOST is bypassed, reducing power further. This mode is suitable for 3 V batteries, such as lithium manganese dioxide (for example, CR2032), as long as the battery voltage is sufficient to power the system directly most of the time.
~90 nA with SHPHLD pin wake-up
~175 nA with wake-up timer
The following example illustrates how combining the nPM2100 Hibernate mode with the system-level power management significantly reduces sleep current and extends the battery life.
Note
Note: Compared to the Ship mode, the Hibernate modes consume more current but offer faster wake-up with possibility of timed wake-up.
System timer and monitor
Even well-tested firmware can occasionally fail due to unexpected interrupts, memory corruption, software bugs, or communication issues. If the MCU is stuck, the entire system might stop responding.
Nordic PMICs, such as nPM2100 and nPM1300/nPM1304, address this by integrating a flexible TIMER (timer/monitor) block, extending their role beyond power delivery to include system supervision and recovery. This helps ensure reliable operation even when the host MCU fails.
The PMIC TIMER (timer/monitor) block can be configured as:
Boot monitor – Verifies correct startup. If the host does not respond within a defined time, the PMIC triggers a reset or power cycle to prevent boot failure.
Watchdog timer – Ensures runtime operation. The MCU must periodically service it, otherwise the PMIC triggers a reset or power cycle, enabling recovery even if firmware becomes unresponsive.
Wake-up timer – Enables autonomous wake-up from the ultra-low-power Hibernate mode for periodic or event-driven operation.
General-purpose timer – Generates timed events for tasks, such as periodic housekeeping, low-frequency scheduling, or system timing, without MCU overhead.
By integrating timing and monitoring functions within the PMIC, systems achieve lower power consumption, reduced firmware complexity, and improved reliability, even when the MCU is inactive or unresponsive.
Fuel gauge
Battery-powered systems require accurate state-of-charge estimation beyond simple voltage measurement. OCV-based methods can be unreliable under varying load and temperature conditions, while coulomb counter–based techniques often require additional ICs and continuous power consumption, making them less suitable for ultra-low-power Bluetooth LE devices.
Nordic PMICs address this by providing an ultra-low-power, fully integrated fuel gauging solution that combines battery measurements with a model-based prediction algorithm to deliver accurate and stable state-of-charge estimation. This enables you to make informed decisions on power management strategies and transitions to ultra-low-power modes, while maintaining predictable battery behavior and improving the overall user experience.
Nordic provides fuel gauge solutions for both rechargeable batteries (nPM1300/nPM1304) and primary batteries (nPM2100). In both cases, the fuel gauge algorithm runs on the host SoC (nRF52, nRF53, nRF54, and nRF91 Series), retrieving measurements from the PMIC over TWI to estimate the battery’s state of charge.
nPM1300/nPM1304 Fuel gauge
The nPM1300 and nPM1304 fuel gauges require a battery model to mathematically represent the battery behavior and predict the state of charge under varying conditions. Battery modeling is enabled by the nPM PowerUP app, available in the nRF Connect for Desktop.
The nPM PowerUP battery profiling solution lets you develop a battery model tailored to your battery characteristics. A one-time profiling in the app generates the model that you can evaluate before integrating it into your application. For details, see the Battery fuel gauge for IoT devices, application note Using the nPM1300 and nPM1304 Fuel Gauge and the nRF Connect SDK samples at nPM13xx Fuel gauge sample.
nPM2100 Fuel gauge
For primary batteries, the nPM2100 fuel gauge provides a simplified and optimized approach, tailored for single-use cells such as alkaline and coin cells.
It combines real-time voltage and temperature measurements with preconfigured battery models derived from extensive testing across different battery types and manufacturers. This enables reliable SoC estimation without the need for battery profiling or external components, making it ideal for low-power applications such as Bluetooth LE devices.
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•Support for nRF54LS05 DK (Available through the early access sampling program) •Support for the nRF54LM20B with Axon NPU for Edge AI applications
Bluetooth LE updates
•Quality of Service module is now production-ready. •New experimental features for RF testing (Direct Test Mode) and low-latency packet handling (LE Flushable ACL).
MCUboot & Partition Manager
•Single-Slot DFU and RAM Load mode are both promoted to fully supported •Partition Manager is officially deprecated in favor of Zephyr's devicetree-based partitioning.
