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.

The A-GPS service is ideal for emergency call purposes, where a users’ position must be established immediately, or in weak signal environments, such as inner city urban canyons where high-rise buildings obstruct direct views to satellites making autonomous satellite acquisition very difficult.

“Our new A-GPS services greatly enhance the capabilities of our high-quality receivers,” said Thomas Seiler, u-blox CEO. “ANTARIS 4 GPS receivers provide remarkable navigation and performance. Now, coupled with high quality A-GPS data from u-blox, our customers get the best of both worlds: World-class GPS receivers and immediate access to location data over wireless networks,” he added.

The communication is based on TCP/IP using Internet and wireless (WLAN or cellular data network like GPRS) technologies. The system is extremely cost-efficient as the data packets are very small in size and transmitted through existing communication networks.

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