S140 SDS v1.3S132 SDS v6.2: Bluetooth Low Energy central connection processor usage patterns

This section describes the processor availability and interrupt processing time for the SoftDevice in a central connection event.

Figure 1. Central connection events (some priority levels left out for clarity)

In a central connection event, the pattern of SoftDevice processing activity at interrupt priority level 0 is typically as follows:

An interrupt (Radio prepare) sets up and prepares the software and hardware.
A short interrupt occurs when the Radio starts transmitting the first packet in the connection event.
When the transmission is complete, there is a radio processing interrupt that switches the Radio to reception.
When the reception is complete, there is a radio processing interrupt that processes the received packet and either switches the Radio back to transmission (and possibly a new reception after that), or the event ends with post processing.
After the priority level 0 processing, the SoftDevice processes any received data packets, executes any Generic Attribute Protocol (GATT), Attribute Protocol (ATT), or Security Manager Protocol (SMP) operations, and generates events to the application as required in priority level 4. The interrupt at this priority level is therefore highly variable based on the stack operations executed.

SoftDevice processing activity in the different priority levels during central connection events is outlined in Processor usage latency when connected. The typical case is seen when receiving GATT write commands writing 20 bytes. The max case can be seen when sending and receiving maximum length packets and initiating encryption, while having a maximum number of connections and utilizing the Radio Timeslot API, Flash memory API, using PA/LNA, and Quality of Service (QoS) channel survey module at the same time.

Table 1. Processor usage latency when connected
Parameter	Description	Min	Typical	Max
t_{ISR(0),RadioPrepare}	Processing when preparing the radio for a connection event		29 μs	65 μs
t_{ISR(0),RadioStart}	Processing when starting the connection event		21 μs	25 μs
t_{ISR(0),RadioProcessing}	Processing after sending or receiving a packet		30 μs	86 μs
t_{ISR(0),PostProcessing}	Processing at the end of a connection event		90 μs	170 μs
t_nISR(0)	Distance between connection event interrupts	183 μs	> 200 μs
t_ISR(4)	Priority level 4 interrupt after a packet is sent or received		40 μs

From the table we can calculate a typical processing time for a central connection event where one packet is sent and received to be:

t_{ISR(0),RadioPrepare} + t_{ISR(0),RadioStart} + t_{ISR(0),RadioProcessing} + t_{ISR(0),PostProcessing} + 2 * t_ISR(4) = 250 μs

This means typically more than 99% of the processor time is available to the application when one peripheral link is established and one packet is sent in each direction with a 100 ms connection interval.