In this project, antenna performance has been a challenge due to the limitations of the mechanical design. The whole device is inside a metal tube and is made completely waterproof using a potting compound to cover the electronics, meaning that to get more than 10m of range the antenna must be optimised. For this purpose we have built a series of antenna PCBs for a comparative performance test.
In this case, under the hood the device is running on a Nordic NRF9160, which provides the processing power, GPS positioning and LTE-M communication within one SIP (system-in-package).