SiRF introduces SiRFInstantFix
SiRF Technology announced last week SiRFInstantFix, a service that will reduce the start up time of GPS systems.
Addressing the number one barrier to instant-on consumer GPS navigation systems, SiRF Technology Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRF), a leading provider of GPS-enabled silicon and premium software location platforms, today introduced SiRFInstantFix, a unique service that minimizes the start-up wait time for GPS systems. SiRFInstantFix provides consumers with the ability to turn on their SiRF-based navigation devices and achieve the first fix in as fast as eight seconds to begin navigating faster than ever before, even through urban canyons, under dense foliage and in other weak-signal conditions.
SiRFInstantFix eliminates the initial time-consuming task of obtaining precise GPS satellite location data – ephemerides – from the satellites themselves. Instead, the SiRFInstantFix server uses a sophisticated set of proprietary algorithms to predict seven days of ephemerides and distills them down to a small file which SiRF-based navigation systems can use to pinpoint every GPS satellite. Using SiRFInstantFix, today’s high-performance GPS receivers can not only start tracking satellites and navigating more quickly, they can do it using signals much weaker than those needed to obtain ephemeris data the traditional way, removing the barrier that often stands in the way of successfully navigating under very weak signal conditions.
[...] U-Blox announces Assisted GPS Services After SiRF announcement of SiRFInstantFix, a service that reduces the start up time of GPS systems u-blox annonced a similar service called Assisted GPS (A-GPS). February 3, 2006 — u-blox AG, the leading Swiss provider of innovative GPS receiver technology, today announced the provision of Assisted GPS (”A-GPS”) services that supply instant location information, reducing GPS receivers’ Time To First Fix (”TTFF”) to just a few seconds. A-GPS uses mobile phone networks to access satellite location data transmitted to and collected by a global monitoring network of u-blox GPS receivers. The collected data is stored at a u-blox aiding server which, in turn, makes the data available to users with mobile phone connectivity. The A-GPS system supplies the satellite location data stored at the server to the GPS receivers contained in users’ mobile phones. The benefit of A-GPS is that users receive this location information instantly rather than having to wait for the GPS receiver to acquire Ephemeris data for visible satellites, which can take from 30 seconds up to several minutes depending on conditions. [...]
February 4th, 2006 at 12:39 pm[...] SiRF Technologies has announced that they will showcase a wide variety of key new GPS products and its first multifunction offering at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona. Besides, SiRFInstantFix and SiRFLink that we have already talked about, they are going to showcase the SiRFstarIII-LT and the GSCi-5000. SiRFstarIII-LT [...]
February 8th, 2006 at 9:27 am