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GPS without PSM using external antenna on Thingy:91

DurandA

I am trying to use the GPS from the Thingy:91. Due to the unavailability of Power Saving Mode (PSM) in roaming with my local provider, I am considering what options are available for me for the asset tracker application. Note that my local provider is not very cooperative with small customers so I am stuck with roaming for now.

I looked at the Thingy:91 FAQ and this question about GPS sensibility. It seems that it is possible to connect an external antenna to J2 with an adapter (I am planning to desolder it and remplace it with an uFL connector with a similar footprint—since the SWF connector also acts as a switch this will disconnect ANT_GPS).

Will it the nRF9160 be able to get GPS data from an external antenna without PSM? Or is this a limitation from the nRF9160 radio? I saw that it is possible to disable PSM when enabling GPS in the Zephyr application configuration:

  • 0

    Hi DurandA,

    Have you found any solution please , I have the same probleme in France no GPS at all .. !!

    Best regards

  • 0 in reply to zoheir

    I was never able to use GPS due to the unavailability of PSM. iBasis roaming in Switzerland never worked properly (it connected a few times but was never able to connect reliably) so I switched to a local provider (Swisscom). Unfortunately my local provider confirmed me that they did not enable PSM yet, so I am still waiting for it!

  • 0 in reply to DurandA

    I tested at Swisscom and a lot of other places where PSM is not implemented correctly.
    You still can get GPS signal but you have to wait till the network goes to the idle state.
    For the Swisscom network this takes around 70 seconds. Other networks without PSM have the parameters set differently and for example Claro in Brazil (without PSM) goes to idle after 16 seconds.

    So in this exampe where you just communicate every two minutes. With Swisscom you will be able to get around 40 GPS fixes and for the Claro example you get around 90 GPS fixes. Depending on your needs you can switch off the GPS early.

    You can register for connected/idle events with 'AT+CSCON=3'.

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