ESP8266 Community Forum

- Thu Sep 04, 2014 9:28 am #164 as stated in various documents, the IC should support antenna diversity.

antenna diversity and choice (by software management hardware)

how can this feature be activated?

a simple antenna switch would require a pin diode and a gpio pin to supply some offset voltage for switching.

- Sat Sep 13, 2014 11:15 am #515 I mailed Espressif about this question and they answered:

Regarding antenna diversity, I think it means we support various antenna, including external, PCB, ceramic.

that's not what I guessed their feature "antenna diversity" is about.

- Sat Sep 13, 2014 12:41 pm #519

I mailed Espressif about this question and they answered:

Regarding antenna diversity, I think it means we support various antenna, including external, PCB, ceramic.

that's not what I guessed their feature "antenna diversity" is about.

I think you got an answer from the marketing guy

If yo usearch for "diversity" into the English datasheet, you get of course a match in the feature list "Supports antenna diversity", but also a more intriguing sentence in the section 9.1 "Features" of the "9 Firmware & Software Development Kit" section: "Antenna diversity and selection (software managed hardware);".

What the heck does this mean? In order to get antenna diversity, you need at least to RF pins, which doesn't seem to be the case of the ESP8266 chip.

- Sat Sep 13, 2014 12:47 pm #520 An important related subject: the "ESP8266 Application Design Guide" provides a schematic to enable "Bluetooth Co-existence" on page 10, so that the WiFi can inter-operate with BlueTooth in the 2.4 GHz band, using a common 3-wire BT protocol.

However, this feature requires many GPIO pins, including U0RXD