nRF93M1: plans to expose LTE Timing Advance through the AT command interface?

[ing-barbiz]

Hello Nordic Support,

I am developing a cellular positioning solution using an nRF93M1 LTE Cat 1 bis module.

I currently use the following command to retrieve the serving cell and neighboring-cell measurements:

AT%BCINFO=3,20

The command provides:

- EARFCN
- PCI
- RSRP
- RSRQ
- MCC/MNC
- E-UTRAN Cell ID
- TAC

However, it does not appear to provide the LTE Timing Advance for the serving cell.

On the nRF91/nRF91x1 family, the %NCELLMEAS response includes a
<timing_advance> field and its measurement timestamp. I could not find an
equivalent documented command or response field in the current nRF93M1 AT
Commands Reference Guide.

Timing Advance would be useful for improving third-party cellular positioning
requests, for example when using APIs that accept the serving-cell Timing
Advance in addition to ECI, TAC, PCI, EARFCN, RSRP, and neighbor measurements.

Could you please clarify:

1. Is the serving-cell Timing Advance currently available through any nRF93M1
AT command or diagnostic interface?
2. If not, is support planned for a future nRF93M1 module firmware release?

Thank you

marco

[Syed Maysum Abbas Zaidi]

Hi,

Here are our response to your questions:

1. There is a command %STATUS that exposes it when the modem is in RRC CONNECTED state.

> at%status="phy"
 
%STATUS: PHY, DlEarfcn:1300, UlEarfcn:19300, PCI:474, Band:3, RSRP:-77, RSRQ:-6, SNR:33, DlBler:0/100, UlBler:0/100,                  DataInactTimerS:150, RetxBSRTimerP:320, TAvalue:52, TxPower:-3, MaxTxPower:23, rxTime:6460, txTime:1254

2. Support similar to nRF91 (cache latest TA and display it with timestamp of capture) can be added in the next public release but currently low priority so it cannot be confirmed. Thanks

I hope it helps.

[ing-barbiz]

hello, thanks for the answer.

but is TA value available or will it be available for the neighbouring cells or just for the serving cell?

my idea was to feed it to the location services.

thanks

Marco