GPS Technology Platform Speeds End Products To Market

With the upgrade of the company’s core CMOS technology to the u-blox 6 platform, designers of portable and battery-operated GPS systems will reap the benefits of drop-in compatibility with the previous generation. Products based on u-blox 6 will have dramatically reduced power requirements thanks to new intelligent power-management features. The innovations enable significantly extended battery life for power-critical GPS applications. With the extension of the acquisition engine to over 2 million correlators, the new chip exhibits stronger acquisition capability of weak signals and a shorter time to first fix. In addition to GPS, u-blox 6 is future-proofed for the upcoming Galileo European satellite system. First samples of the UBX-G6010 single-chip GPS receiver and UBX-G6000/G0010 chipset will be available by the end of 2009 for customer evaluation, with the LEA and NEO GPS receiver module families upgraded shortly afterwards. Key application areas for u-blox 6-based products include ultra-low-power GPS loggers, asset and fleet management, people and animal trackers, automotive GPS black boxes, personal navigation and recreational devices as well as cameras and camera phones with geotagging capability. u-blox 6 ICs will be available in standard and automotive-grade versions. U-BLOX AG, Thalwil, Switzerland. +41 44 722 74 44.