Bluetooth Low Energy

Designing Low-Power Bluetooth LE Products

Course description

Designing Low-Power Bluetooth LE Products is a hands-on course focused on building Bluetooth LE products for minimal power consumption and extended battery life.

The course offers comprehensive guidance on achieving the lowest possible power consumption while maintaining high system performance. It covers the entire lifecycle of a Low-Power Bluetooth LE product, from design and development through deployment

It begins by establishing a solid foundation in power consumption principles and provides a thorough overview of the factors that influence power usage in a Bluetooth LE product design, from hardware and firmware choices to estimating a complete power budget for a product.

We will examine power management ICs (PMICs) and the benefits they offer to Bluetooth LE products, whether powered by primary cells or rechargeable batteries.

Participants will explore various power measurement tools, gaining an understanding of their advantages, limitations, and best-use scenarios. The course also covers how to verify measurement setups and ensure that the collected data is accurate.

The course then dives into Bluetooth LE protocol–specific optimization techniques, with an emphasis on advertising and connection states for peripheral devices. Finally, participants will learn Nordic Semiconductor SoC–specific power optimization techniques, including different power modes, the impact of clock sources, peripherals and GPIO pin configurations, memory retention, the global real-time counter (GRTC), the PPI system, and EasyDMA.

Once a product is deployed, it’s essential to monitor its behavior in the field and deliver over-the-air (OTA) updates when needed. In the last lesson of this course, you’ll learn how to use nRF Cloud powered by Memfault to remotely monitor and diagnose Bluetooth LE devices by collecting key data such as connection parameters, peer details, disconnection trends, and battery status.

What you'll learn

Grasp the essentials of electrical quantities, Bluetooth LE product architecture, and how component choices and system design decisions shape overall power consumption.
Learn how to estimate the power budget for your Bluetooth LE product.
Learn about PMICs for primary cells and rechargeable batteries and the features and benefits they bring to a Bluetooth LE product
Learn how to accurately measure, analyze, and validate power usage using tools like oscilloscopes, ammeters, Power analyzer/SMU, and PPK2, while avoiding common measurement pitfalls.
Master Bluetooth LE power optimization by understanding how advertising, connection parameters, PHY, TX power, packet strategy, and GATT operations influence consumption, and practice optimizing these for connected and broadcasting roles.
Learn how clocks sources, sleep modes, and peripherals impact power, and how to configure and measure them for optimal efficiency, reinforced by hands-on exercises.
Practice how to use the Event System and EasyDMA to reduce CPU wakeups by letting peripherals work independently.
Practice adding remote monitoring and OTA capabilities for your Bluetooth LE product using nRF Cloud powered by Memfault

Who should enroll in this course?

This course is ideal for anyone designing battery-powered Bluetooth LE devices aiming for extended battery life. It covers Bluetooth LE optimizations and Nordic’s SoC-specific power optimization techniques.

Estimated time

The estimated time needed to finish this course is about ten to twelve hours.

Learning Objectives

Power consumption essentials

Review the basics of electrical quantities.
Explore the hardware architecture of a typical Bluetooth LE product.
Understand how the choice, arrangement, and configuration of components, such as PMICs, sensors, LEDs, and user interfaces, affect power consumption.
Learn how architectural design choices for different Bluetooth LE roles impact power consumption.
Get familiar with the Online Power Profiler (OPP), a Nordic Semiconductor web tool for power consumption estimation.
Learn how to calculate an estimated power budget for your Bluetooth LE product.

Designing with Nordic PMIC

Compare Nordic’s PMIC lineup (rechargeable vs. primary cell) and learn how to select the appropriate PMIC for a given product design and battery type
Identify the system management features integrated into Nordic PMICs and explore how they can reduce overall power consumption beyond what the SoC alone can achieve
Learn how to use Nordic’s PMIC tools, and drivers to integrate the PMIC with the host SoC and verify correct operation
Learn through hands-on exercise how to wire an nPM2100 EK to an nRF54L development kit and configure the boost converter to deliver a stable 1.8 V (or higher) supply from a single AAA/AA cell

Tools and best practices for power measurement

Understand how to accurately measure and analyze power consumption, including how to measure periodic signals, and evaluate the strengths, limitations, and common pitfalls of different measurement tools (oscilloscope, ammeter, SMU/PPK) for both detailed time-domain analysis and low-current measurement
Learn to avoid common pitfalls and follow best practices for custom firmware/hardware measurement setups: identify and eliminate leakage sources (GPIO states, pullups, debugger connections, back-powering paths, device variation, unused peripherals) that can cause unpredictable current consumption and distort results.
Explore how to verify your measurement setup under controlled conditions before conducting measurements on your own custom hardware/firmware.
Learn through hands-on exercise how to measure power consumption on the nRF54L Series DKs using: Oscilloscope, PPK2, DC Power Analyzer, and ammeter

Bluetooth LE power optimization

Understand how Bluetooth LE connection parameters, interval, peripheral latency, TX power, and PHY, affect power consumption.
Examine how advertising data, type, and parameters, such as interval, transmit power, mode (connectable vs. non-connectable, scannable vs. non-scannable), and channel map, impact power consumption.
Learn how packet size optimization and the choice of GATT operation (requests vs. commands, notification vs. indications) influence power optimization.
Understand the relationship between throughput, latency, and low power, and learn key Bluetooth LE connection considerations for smartphones.
Practice through hands-on exercises how to optimize power consumption in a Bluetooth LE connection by adjusting various connection aspects.
Practice through hands-on exercises how to optimize power consumption in a Bluetooth LE broadcaster by adjusting various advertising aspects.

SoC-specific power optimization – Part 1

Learn how the low-frequency clock (LFCLK) source affects power consumption, accuracy, and cost, and how to select the best option for your product requirements.
Learn about the different sleep modes in the nRF54L Series.
- System ON IDLE with full memory retention, 192 KB RAM, 96 KB RAM, and with different sub-modes
- System OFF (deep sleep) with wake-up sources such as GPIO, LPCOMP, NFCT, or GRTC.
- Get familiar with common hardware/software issues that impact sleep current.
Learn how to identify the enabled and actually used peripherals in an nRF Connect SDK application and verify whether they have interrupt setups.
Measure the power consumption impact of various peripherals: UART, watchdog, timers from different power domains, and PWM outputs, including standard and low-power GRTC on average current and System ON idle current.
Practice through hands-on exercises how to put the nRF54L Series SoCs into different power-saving modes, and evaluate the power consumption in sleep modes using different device configurations.

SoC-specific power optimization – Part 2

Understand the trade-offs between the two types of GPIO interrupts (PORT sense and GPIOTE IN events) and learn the intended use cases for each.
Learn how to use the Event System to enable peripherals to interact autonomously without waking the CPU.
Learn how to use EasyDMA to move data between peripherals and memory without CPU intervention.
Practice through a hands-on exercise how to apply these techniques with the Event System and EasyDMA.
Practice through a hands-on exercise how interrupt type affects System ON-idle current using both the PORT sense mechanism and the GPIOTE IN mechanism.

Remote Monitoring of Bluetooth LE Products with nRF Cloud

Learn why remote data collection matters for low-power Bluetooth LE products and how field conditions differ from lab testing.
Learn which Bluetooth LE data points (connection interval, peripheral latency, PHY, data length, RSSI, peer vendor and version, disconnection reasons) are most relevant for diagnosing power consumption and connection stability issues.
Understand how diagnostic data flows from a Bluetooth LE peripheral through the Memfault Diagnostic Service (MDS) to a central device and on to nRF Cloud.
Practice setting up the Memfault SDK in an nRF Connect SDK Bluetooth LE application and verifying that data arrives in the nRF Cloud dashboard.
Practice interpreting Bluetooth LE metrics in the nRF Cloud device timeline and relating them to the power optimization concepts covered in earlier lessons.
Practice using the nRF Cloud dashboard to identify and debug firmware faults by correlating crash data with Bluetooth LE activity metrics.

Version The version can be changed at any time during the course and does not affect the certificate

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Details

Intermediate level

7 lessons

10-12 hours to complete

Certificate of completion

Prerequisites

nRF Connect SDK Fundamentals course
- (Required) Lesson 1
Some experience in developing Bluetooth LE applications
- If no prior experience: Bluetooth Low Energy Fundamentals course is recommended