Radio power consumption? (per MB, per minute, etc)

I’m wondering if anyone has any analysis on power requirements. I’m really looking for anything, but some specific questions to get started:

  1. Power consumption in standby
  2. Max power consumption with full radio power
  3. Total energy used to transfer 1MB of data (at various signal strengths)

Hello @mristroph,

First, I’d like to share this from this post:
https://community.konekt.io/t/powering-dash-what-are-the-options/64/6

I wanted to let you both (and the world) know that the battery monitoring API/library, along with the initial microcontroller sleep states API/library, will be available in the next Arduino IDE update (scheduled for next week).

These two updates will require only updating our Arduino IDE integration to gain access to their respective libraries, and will not require a firmware update. (There will also be a future firmware update that will expand the available sleep states.)

All the best,
PFW

So, please hold while we finish the code and measurements on the power consumption in standby.

“Full radio power” has a relatively big spread. There are a lot of different modes and a lot of different transmit powers depending on how far you are from the cell tower, what type of network you are on, and what’s in the way (atmosphere, buildings, trees, squirrels, flying carpets) etc.

To answer this question, I’d like to point you to the Ublox modem system integration manuals:
https://www.u-blox.com/sites/default/files/LISA-U2_SysIntegrManual_(UBX-13001118).pdf

https://www.u-blox.com/sites/default/files/SARA-G3-U2_SysIntegrManual_(UBX-13000995).pdf

There you’ll see a bunch of great illustrations of the current consumption of the modem in various modes. I’ve included the worst case current consumption for reference:

As for the total energy used to transfer 1 MB of data, @KonektPat and the rest of the team will have to run through some scenarios and get back to you. Sending 1MB of data in one shot and sending 1 MB of data over the course of the day are going to have different power profiles.

Thanks a ton for this! Any update from additional testing?

I done a quick test to measure power usage at startup and into an idle connected state with the default firmware

You can see the results here

This is incredibly helpful; thank you!