ESP32 WiFi TX Duty Cycle

[jrddunbr]

I'm trying to make a real-time device that is sending data roughly once every 10-50ms to another ESP device. The data sent via JSON is pretty small - just two floating point numbers.

I'm finding that when I do an HTTP client request call in a loop to a Linux computer, that the WiFi on the ESP32 drops out for up to a few seconds after running the program for a minute or so. I've seen a post on Stack Overflow from a while ago with someone else experiencing this issue, but I can't find any information about TX limitations on the ESP32 or ESP8266 chips. I've experienced the exact same behavior on both chips across several boards that I've tested with.

Is there any documentation that covers the RF duty cycle and compliance information that could be relevant to this? The best I could find was for the RF Test tool where it said that the duty cycle for the "default" mode was 98% or more, but I don't know if that's what is causing this since that could just be the testing tool.

Does anyone know why I'm getting these blips? Is there a (good) way around this issue?

I've attached an image from my SDR at the 2.4GHz range showing when this issue occurs. The other traffic seen during the time when the device is off is from other WiFi traffic on the local network and is not the ESP device sending the transmissions.

[ESP_Sprite]

Odd, that's not expected behaviour. Can you try to disable WiFi power saving (in menuconfig somewhere), see if that improves the situation?