Shared LTE/GPS antenna for nRF91 series

[JordanK]

We're designing a board using the Thingy:91X as a reference design. We're trying to determine if we can use one Ignion antenna, shared for the LTE and GPS.

On the original Thingy 91, it shared an antenna for the nRF91's LTE and GPS. This makes sense, since the nRF91 series time-multiplexes the LTE and GPS, per the documentation, so there's no advantage to using separate antennas.

On the newer Thingy 91X though, it changed to use separate antennas for the LTE and GPS. We're unclear on why this was changed, and if there's any advantage to it.

[Matthew]

I found that the Thingy91 shared LTE and GPS antenna was pretty horrible and really struggled to get a fix in the best of scenarios, albeit I was testing without any AGPS data. I haven't personally used the 91X but I'd suggest that anything would be an improvement over sharing the antenna. It would also mean that while getting GPS data you could still do some cellular stuff.