NTN with the nrf9151?

jacepetersen12 · 2025-03-31T02:17:10+00:00

Do you have any idea when we’ll be able to connect to NTN satellites via Skylo?

jaredwolff

That’s awesome!!!!!!

AchimKraus

The nRF9151-feather will speed up gathering real world experience with satellites a lot.
Using the nRF9151-SMA-DK in the field would come much more pain compared to the feather.
I will need to test it much better, but I hope, the first longer test run will start in October.

jaredwolff

Gotta get some other things done but plan to dive in more with Soracom/Skylo very shortly. Exciting stuff. 😃

MarciWandy

AchimKraus Hey Achim! I’ve just purchased a Feather A1A chip after seeing that communication with Skylo was possible, that’s awesome! I have flashed the latest FW from the Nordic webpage but I cannot execute most of the AT commands. Do you know where I can find this prealpha FW?

Thanks in advance!

jaredwolff

@MarciWandy you need to contact your Nordic sales rep. It’s not public yet as far as I understand. I think they’re getting close to 1.0 though!

MarciWandy

Oh! I’ll try to reach them

Thank you anyway!

AchimKraus

Yes, you need to contact Nordic. Since end of September it’s now ntn-0.5.0 (without the prealpha).
You will need additional SIM cards with the satellite subscription. I use a x9003334 antenna, and i still want to check the LTE + GPS Combo Antenna and the new 70 mm PCB from Antennity . But my test data volume is limited …

careTacklePrince

AchimKraus

Ive got an NTN compatible feather in the post on its way at the moment and am looking at antenna options to order. Im quite new to this and given the single U.Fl connector on the 9151 feather, im trying (but struggling) to find a single antenna that would support both NTN transmission and GNSS. Have you had any luck in this area?

Many thanks

MarciWandy

Thank you a lot for the response and the details of the setup! Regarding the SIM, I’ve seen in Skylo webpage that Kigen and Thales are Skylo’s SIM partners. I suppose that I would need a SIM/eSIM from them, wouldn’t I? Are this satellite subscriptions already public?

jaredwolff

MarciWandy typically they need to turn NTN “on” since it’s still early days. You may need a specific SIM as well.

For example here: Skylo partnered with Soracom. I needed to contact the team at Soracom to make sure my account was NTN enabled.

MarciWandy

Thx for the info!

AchimKraus

Same here, I’m part of the Deutsche Telekom “Multi Satellite EAP” and so I got access to the ntn mfw and to the SIMs with NTN subscription.

AchimKraus

I don’t use GNSS.
For NTN I did some test with the “LTE + GPS Combo Antenna” offered here, the Kyocera X9003334, PCB loop-monopole and Amazon Bingfu 4G LTE Antenna Outdoor. Some need a U.FL SMA adapter.
The “Outdoor” one I mainly use to run the device from my desk and have the antenna outside through my window. The cable is rather thin, so in my case I’m even able to close my window ;-).
In my tests that outdoor antenna seems to provide the best connectivity, the others works as well but will need one or two retransmission more from time to time.
And band 256 seems to perform better than 255.

Examples:
(outdoor antenna)
nRF9151-feather 025, 12, 20, 30, failures 0
Net: NTN,Band 256,PLMN 90198,Cell 2704027,EARFCN 229364
CE: RSRP: -126 dBm, SNR: 1 dB
25 messages without retransmission (timeout 30s)
2 with one retransmission

(Unfortunately it’s not too easy to have “clear test runs”. At that time my other antenna connects to 255 and so can’t be compared ;-( ).

AchimKraus

Maybe this other user Accessing GNSS through the at_client program can help you with the antenna for GNSS.

careTacklePrince

AchimKraus

Thankyou Achim.

Im coming from a software engineering / Web dev background so this is all quite new to me. I really appreciate the advice! Ill take a look at the Antennas you’ve mentioned and have asked in the other thread as well