The Definitive Guide to the ARM Cortex-M0

Chapter 11. Low-Power Features

Low-Power Embedded System Overview

There are many types of low-power embedded systems, and different systems can have different low-power requirements. Typically, we can summarize these requirements into the categories outlined in Table 11.1.

Table 11.1 Typical Requirements of Low-Power Embedded Systems

Requirements	Typical Low-Power Considerations
Low operating power	During operation, the power consumption of a microcontroller is dominated by the transistor switching current. This includes the processor, memory, peripherals, clocking circuits, and other analog circuits on the chip.
Low standby power	The power consumption during standby is mostly caused by leakage circuits, clocking circuits, active peripherals, the analog ...