u-blox announces dual GPS and Galileo chip featuring acquisition time of under 1 second
u-blox announces dual GPS and Galileo chip featuring acquisition time of under 1 second
Thalwil (ots) u-blox AG, the leading Swiss provider of innovative GPS receiver technology, today announced the u-blox 5 family of GPS and Galileo-ready single chips and chipsets featuring an acquisition performance of under 1 second. The new chips also feature SuperSense® -160 dBm acquisition and tracking sensitivity, power needs of less than 50 mW and a footprint smaller than 100 mm2, making u-blox 5 receivers ideal for PDAs, personal navigation devices, cameras, cell phones, media players and other battery-operated portable devices.
"This is the fastest, most sensitive GPS chip on the market today, and among the smallest and most power efficient, making it ideally suited for use in mass market consumer electronic devices," said u-blox Chief Executive, Thomas Seiler. "This breakthrough technology is yet another endorsement of the strength of u-blox' research and development team."
u-blox 5's ultra-fast acquisition time is due to its 50-channel architecture with over 1 million correlators and separate acquisition and tracking engines, capable of massively parallel searches.
A built-in power management unit features a DC/DC converter that optimizes power use across a single voltage source. The chip's ultra-low power needs ensure long battery times for PDAs, smart phones and other battery-operated handheld devices. u-blox 5 has a fractional N clock synthesizer that supports the common cell phone reference frequencies. Moreover, u-blox' new generation supports assisted GPS (A-GPS) services such as AssistNow and OMA/SUPL standards and exceeds performance requirements for international A-GPS standards including 3GPP TS 25.171, TIA 916 and E911 Phase II.
u-blox 5 GPS receivers come in single chip and chipset packages. A highly integrated architecture keeps costs to a bare minimum by reducing the bill of materials to as few as 17 passive external components and keeping the footprint small. The cost-optimized UBX-G5010 single chip has a 56-pin QFN package that measures a mere 8 x 8 mm. Customers who prefer chipsets with an optional Flash memory can combine the 9 x 9 mm UBX-G5000 100-pin BGA baseband chip and the 4 x 4 mm UBX-G0010 24-pin QFN RF front-end. Both the single chip and the chipset support passive antennas with their integrated low-noise amplifier.
The chips' software contains an innovative jamming suppression mechanism that automatically filters signals from interfering sources, thus maintaining high GPS performance no matter what the environment. A robust multipath detection and elimination mechanism endows u-blox 5 chips with best-in-class navigation in urban canyons.
u-blox 5 products will be capable, via a simple software upgrade, of receiving and processing L1 Galileo signals once they become available. The combination of GPS and Galileo signals will bring even better coverage, reliability and navigation accuracy.
Engineering samples will be available in the first quarter of 2007.
(A photograph can be downloaded from www.u-blox.com/news/u-blox_5.jpg)
About u-blox
u-blox is an international company headquartered in Switzerland, with sales organizations in the Americas, Europe and Asia. Founded in 1997, u-blox develops leading positioning technology, products and services based on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), including GPS and Galileo, for the automotive and mobile communications markets. For more information, please visit www.u-blox.com
Contact:
u-blox
Georg zur Bonsen
Product Management
Tel. +41/44/722'74'44
e-mail: georg.zurbonsen@u-blox.com
Alicia Montoya
Marketing Communications
Tel. +41/44/722'74'86
e-mail: alicia.montoya@u-blox.com