PLS62-W Diversity Antenna | Thales IoT Developer Community
July 27, 2022 - 3:44pm, 420 views
We have been using the PLS62-W in our product for a while, and have only been using the ‘Main Antenna’ connection, with the ‘diversity antenna’ left unconnected, and have had no issues.
I was just doing some further reading and was wondering if someone could let me know some more detail about the need for the diversity antenna? Are we severely hampering our network connectivity by only using the main antenna, and should we indeed be using two antennas?
The product is a telemetry device and only transfers very small payloads of data once a day.
Any comments would be appreciated.
Hello,
Diversity antenna is here only for reception. So, it improves the Rx signal reliability and quality. It could be especially important in urban and indoor environments. By default it is enabled in the configuration.
BR,
Bartłomiej
Thanks for your comment. Much appreciated.
If it is enabled, but left floating (no antenna connected) would that have any degrading affects?
Many thanks
Alex
Hello,
It is configurable via AT command, so it's easy to switch it off when not used. However there should be no harm to the hardware if it's enabled and the antenna is not connected. Anyway it is better to disable it when not connected to avoid module attempting to decode the signal from the antenna that does not exist and any potential communication errors caused by this.
In general LTE Cat.1 standard is designed for two antennas, so that's why the default setting is as it is.
BR,
Bartłomiej