Difference bewteen nRF9160 DK and Thingy:91 antenna design

[parobin]

Hello,

After looking at the schematic of the nRF9160 DK and the Thingy:91, I noticed that for the nRF9160 DK there is only one antenna design for LTE, while for the Thingy:91 there is a multiplexer that allows you to choose between different configurations in order to adapt to the selected frequencies.

Does this mean that the nRF9160 DK is configured to work with only one frequency band as it is? If so, what is that band?
Thanks

[JONATHAN LL]

Hi,

We have more info on the antenna requirements here. 

As for the antennas we have some guiltiness there as well for of the shelf antennas.

The antenna on the DK: P822601 can also be tuned to different frequency's. On page 3 in the PDF you can see what bands are covered and not. 

Radiated performance om the 91 DK.


And the Thingy91 antenna: FR01-S4-210(TRIO mXTEND NN03-310) Ignion (formerly Fractus) 

One reason for the setup on the thingy 91 is the fact that it uses one antenna for both GPS and LTE, while the DK has one antenna for each. 

The DK does support LTE bands B1, B2, B3, B4, B5, B8, B12, B13, B14, B17, B18, B19, B20, B25, B26, B28 and B66 have been certified. You can check out more details here.




In short:
All antennas on the nRF9160 DK have fixed matching networks, which means that no matching configuration is needed to switch between the frequency bands. The average performance of the LTE antenna mounted on the nRF9160 DK is shown in the table below. The LTE antenna also supports other frequency ranges but it is not optimized for operating on these frequency bands.
B3, B4, B13, B20.


Regards,
Jonathan