nRF9160 COEX pins handling in Zephyr BLE firmware

[DevinCallahan]

Are there any examples of how to configure the COEX pins between the 9160 and a 52840 such that each will actually use the signals to start/stop their respective radios?  The PCA10090 devkit has options to wire the pins together, but I don't see any actual handling of them anywhere in the BLE firmware.  Do I need to switch to the NRF5 SDK in order to get functionality like that?

Thank you!

[Guojun Wang]

Hi Callahan,

Unfortunately, the support in BLE to coex with 9160 in nRF Connect SDK is not ready yet.

I think you can proceed with nRF5 SDK if you can manage it. Otherwise, you can wait for future releases of nRF Connect SDK. But we don't have clear timeline when this feature will be released. 

[DevinCallahan]

Would you be able to direct me to an example of the COEX stuff in the nRF5 SDK?  I haven't been able to find it myself yet.

[Guojun Wang]

Hi Callahan,

nRF5 SDK has coexistence feature for ANT protocol and BLE which runs on the same chip and radio. It has a different coexistence mechanism for LTE which runs on the nrf9160 chips utilizing the coex pins to sync with each other. 

I assume it will be challenging to use nRF5 SDK.

But you can use COEX2 to detect if 9160 modem transceiver is active or not, to decide when ble activities can be carried on. And there is no way to stop 9160 traffic from BLE side since it is not supported yet.

You can read similar discussion in the other post.

Or you can implement a mechanism in your application code to accept packet loss and re-transmission in case both interfere with each other without the coexistence feature.