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.

[Simonr]

Hi

Indeed, the GPS and LTE performance will be better with separate antenna. Unfortunately the people that were in on the decision making are currently away and won't be back until mid July. If you want me to reach out to them when they return, please let me know. But I can't promise any further details/reasoning than to improve GPS/LTE performance.

Best regards,

Simon

[JordanK]

How does it improve performance though? Only one of the radios can be active at a time, and they each get their own tuning circuit anyways.