Power Management and Low-Power Optimisation

With the wide application of IoT products, people can see more and more IoT products in daily life, such as smart watches, smart sockets, smart light bulbs, smart speakers, etc. Many of these IoT products are under pressure to reduce their power consumption because they are powered by battery or require certification for energy consumption. For example, the CEC Tile 20 specification mandates that smart bulbs must not exceed a standby power consumption of 0.2W to obtain energy consumption certification in California, USA. Battery-powered smartwatches also aim to extend their working hours. Developers of such IoT products must prioritise power consumption as a crucial consideration during product development. They must have a comprehensive understanding of the power consumption characteristics of the chips they use, and be skilled in utilising the relevant chips in practical IoT projects. To achieve this, they should prioritise using low-power wireless communication technologies, such as Bluetooth LE, and employ low-power circuit design in their implementations. This ensures that power consumption is minimised throughout the development process.

In low-power scenarios, the lifetime of a battery-powered device and its ability to pass energy certification are often determined by its average current. This average current is influenced by several factors, including the current in different low-power modes, the operating current in active states, the duration of low-power mode activation or deactivation, and the processing power of the CPU. ESP32-C3 provides chip-level support for low-power scenarios. It employs advanced power management technology to switch between different power modes and features intelligent low-power peripherals that help reduce CPU wakeup times, resulting in further reduction of overall power consumption.