Many Matter devices are battery‑powered and must operate for months or years without recharging. To make this possible, the device has to minimize its use of the CPU, radio, and peripherals whenever possible. While Matter runs over both Thread and Wi‑Fi, the majority of low‑power techniques apply to Matter over Thread, where the radio and network stack are designed for extremely low duty‑cycle operation.
This topic introduces the core principles behind reducing power consumption in Matter devices. It lays the foundation for the following topic, where these ideas are extended into full Intermittently Connected Device (ICD) behavior.
Why power optimization matters
Battery-powered devices such as sensors, switches, and small actuators must balance responsiveness, network availability, and battery lifetime. The key to long operation is to reduce the time the device spends awake and to minimize how often the radio must transmit or receive.
To optimize power consumption, devices should:
Spend as much time sleeping as possible
Wake only when there is meaningful work to do
Limit network traffic and avoid unnecessary messages
Reduce CPU activity and disable unused peripherals
Thread’s sleepy device roles make this feasible by allowing Matter devices to operate with extremely low radio duty cycles.
Factors that influence power consumption
Power consumption in a Matter device depends on how often the radio is active, how the application behaves, and how Thread manages communication. The following sections describe these influences in more detail.
Sleep and wake behavior
The most effective way to reduce power consumption is to keep the device asleep. While sleeping, only essential retention memory and minimal circuitry remain powered. The device wakes for events such as:
Sending or updating attributes
Responding to commands
Performing network polling
Commissioning or Over-The-Air (OTA) operations
Longer intervals between wakeups dramatically reduce power consumption.
Thread end-device behavior
As covered in Lesson 2 Thread networking, Thread defines multiple device types, two of which are optimized for low power:
Sleepy End Device (SED)
SEDs sleep and periodically poll their parent router using data requests. The polling interval directly determines radio usage: short intervals improve responsiveness but increase current consumption.
Synchronized Sleepy End Device (SSED)
SSEDs use Coordinated Sampled Listening (CSL), waking only during scheduled receive windows synchronized with the parent. This removes the need for constant polling and can improve efficiency depending on the application.
Both device types drastically reduce radio-on time compared to Thread routers, which must stay awake continuously.
Polling behavior
Sleepy Thread devices wake at regular intervals to request pending messages from their parent router. This polling mechanism is central to low-power operation.
Definition
Polling interval is the time between a sleepy end device’s parent polls. Longer intervals improve power efficiency but increase latency.
A shorter interval results in quicker message delivery but higher radio-on time, while a longer interval reduces power consumption but increases latency.
Application-level behavior
The application can consume a surprising amount of energy if not designed carefully. Frequent sensor sampling, high reporting frequency, multiple timers, and attribute writes sent one-by-one instead of grouped together all increase the number of wakeups and radio activity.
Optimizing application behavior often provides some of the easiest solutions when it comes to battery life.
Low-power support in the nRF Connect SDK
The nRF Connect SDK includes built‑in features that help Matter devices remain energy efficient:
Highly optimized IEEE 802.15.4 radio drivers
Full support for Thread SED/SSED roles
Zephyr power management for automatic CPU and peripheral sleeping
Runtime power management for drivers
Sample Matter apps with low-power defaults
These capabilities allow Nordic Matter devices to sleep for long periods and wake only when necessary.
Matter over Wi‑Fi considerations
While Matter also supports Wi‑Fi, Wi‑Fi radios have a significantly higher baseline power draw compared to Thread. They must stay active more frequently, making them unsuitable for long‑lived battery-powered devices.
Wi‑Fi low-power modes (based on DTIM intervals) can reduce consumption somewhat, but Matter over Wi‑Fi is generally recommended only for mains-powered devices.
Configuration and APIs for low‑power Matter devices
There are many ways to reduce power consumption in your application, including methods related to the adopted network technology, disabling specific modules, or configuring features meant for optimizing power consumption.
This section summarizes general and protocol-specific build‑time configurations and APIs you can use to reduce the power consumption.
Select Thread sleepy device type (SED / SSED)
Sleepy Thread devices (SED and SSED) wake periodically to check if the parent router has messages for them. Both are variants of the Minimal Thread Device (MTD).
To enable SED support, the following Kconfig options must be enabled:
CONFIG_CHIP_THREAD_SSED: Enables SSED support in Matter.
Thread polling period and child timeouts
Sleepy Thread devices wake at defined intervals to receive messages. SED devices use data polling at a fixed interval, while SSED devices listen in short, scheduled CSL windows that are synchronized with the parent. In both cases, Thread timeout values must not force the device to wake more often than intended.
Polling period (SED)
The polling period defines how often an SED wakes up to request any pending messages from its parent router:
Copy
CONFIG_OPENTHREAD_POLL_PERIOD=<ms>
Kconfig
CONFIG_OPENTHREAD_POLL_PERIOD: configures the polling interval (in milliseconds) for SED devices.
Child timeouts (SED and SSED)
Thread sleepy devices must periodically confirm that they are still connected to their parent. If these timeout values are set shorter than the device’s intended wake-up interval (poll period for SED, CSL-based timing for SSED), the device will wake up earlier than expected to satisfy Thread requirements.
To avoid extra wake-ups, set the following timeout values to be greater than or equal to your intended wake-up interval (or the ICD slow poll interval, which you will learn about in the following topic):
CONFIG_OPENTHREAD_MLE_CHILD_TIMEOUT: Maximum time (in seconds) a parent waits without hearing from the child before considering it detached. Set this ≥ the device’s wake‑up interval.
CONFIG_OPENTHREAD_CHILD_SUPERVISION_CHECK_TIMEOUT: Child-side interval (in seconds) for expecting a supervision message from the parent before checking in. Set this ≥ the wake‑up interval.
CONFIG_OPENTHREAD_CHILD_SUPERVISION_INTERVAL: Parent-side interval (in seconds) for sending supervision messages when no other traffic occurs. Set this ≥ the wake‑up interval to avoid extra wakeups.
Reducing power during Bluetooth LE commissioning
Matter devices advertise over Bluetooth LE before joining a fabric. The duration of advertising has a direct impact on energy consumption.
CONFIG_CHIP_BLE_EXT_ADVERTISING: Set to n to disable extended advertising. When disabled, the device cannot advertise for longer than 15 minutes.
CONFIG_CHIP_BLE_ADVERTISING_DURATION: Sets the advertising duration (in minutes).
Low‑power Wi‑Fi (when using Matter over Wi‑Fi)
Matter over Wi‑Fi devices are generally mains‑powered since the low‑power behavior has limited low‑power features. The main mechanism is Wi‑Fi Power Save (PS), where the device sleeps between DTIM (Delivery Traffic Indication Map) intervals. A longer DTIM interval reduces wakeups but also increases latency and still results in much higher power draw than Thread.
To enable the Wi-Fi power save mode, use the following:
Copy
CONFIG_NRF_WIFI_LOW_POWER=y
Kconfig
CONFIG_NRF_WIFI_LOW_POWER: Enables low power mode in nRF Wi-Fi chipsets.
General power‑optimization recommendations
In addition to Thread‑ and Matter‑specific configuration, several platform‑level techniques can reduce the device’s baseline power consumption. These methods apply to all Matter devices, regardless of whether they use Thread or Wi‑Fi, and should be considered when designing battery‑powered products.
Enable Zephyr’s system power management
Zephyr’s System Power Management subsystem can be used to reduce power consumption by allowing the CPU and peripherals to sleep automatically when idle. This is enabled with the following Kconfig option:
Copy
CONFIG_PM=y
Kconfig
Reduce baseline power consumption
The following optimizations help minimize current consumption while the device is idle or sleeping.
Disable serial logging
Logging keeps the UART active, which significantly increases idle current.
To disable this, disable the logging module in Kconfig and set the UART peripheral state to disabled in the devicetree.
Copy
CONFIG_NRF_WIFI_LOW_POWER=y
Kconfig
Copy
&uart1 { status = "disabled";};
Devicetree
Disable unused pins and peripherals
Ensure that unused hardware blocks (I²C/SPI controllers, GPIOs, timers) are not left enabled. These can be disabled by setting the peripheral state to disabled, for example:
Copy
&adc { status = "disabled";};
Devicetree
Disable the LED module in Matter samples
LEDs draw current even when toggled infrequently. These can be disabled in Matter applications by setting the following:
Copy
CONFIG_NCS_SAMPLE_MATTER_LEDS=n
Kconfig
Put external flash into sleep mode
If your board includes external flash, ensure it enters deep‑power‑down mode when not in use. It can be powered down with pm_device_action_run().
Power down unused RAM sections
Unused RAM blocks can be disabled to lower leakage current. To enable this feature, set the following:
Copy
CONFIG_RAM_POWER_DOWN_LIBRARY=y
Kconfig
When this is enabled, the power_down_unused_ram() function is called automatically in the matter_init.cpp file during the initialization process.
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•Matter over Thread support for nRF54LM20A and nRF54LM20B SoCs. •Matter over Wi-Fi® support for nRF54LM20A combined with the nRF7002-EB II shield. •Released the Matter Cluster Editor app v1.0.1 and Matter Quick Start app v1.1.0.
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.
