GPS World, January 2014

THE BUSINESS CONSUMER OEM LOCATION BASED SERVICES Broadcom Offers Location Chip with BeiDou Support Broadcom Corporation has introduced the BCM47531 a GNSS chip that generates positioning data from five satellite constellations simultaneously GPS GLONASS QZSS SBAS and BeiDou The newly added BeiDou constellation increases the number of satellites available to a smartphone enhancing navigation accuracy particularly in urban settings where buildings and obstructions can affect performance More than 226 million mobile phones were sold to end users in Asia in the first quarter of 2013 increasing the regions share of global mobile phones to 531 percent according to Gartner Market Share Analysis Mobile Phones Worldwide 1Q13 As smartphone adoption continues to accelerate users continue to identify location and mapping as a top requirement Broadcoms new GNSS system on chip SoC is based on its widely deployed architecture that reduces the time to first fix and allows smartphones to quickly establish location and rapidly deliver mapping data the company said The SoC also features a tri band tuner that enables smartphones to receive signals from all major navigation bands GPS GLONASS QZSS SBAS and BeiDou simultaneously By allowing use of any combination of satellites users experience more accurate and consistent location performance in Asia and throughout the world the company said and unlocks new location aware applications The BCM47531 platform is available with Broadcoms location based services technology that delivers satellite assistance data to the device and provides an initial fix time within seconds instead of the minutes that may be required to receive orbit data from the satellites themselves RECEIVER DEVELOPMENT Galileo Fix Achieved with Open Source Software Receiver Position fixes in real time using signals from Galileo have been achieved with an open source software receiver The milestone was achieved by a research team from the Statistical Inference Department at the Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya CTTC which manages the development of the open source project GNSS SDR Professional full featured receivers are expensive and even in those cases the users have limited access if any to know exactly how position and time information were computed CTTC said In addition these receivers exhibit very few upgrading capabilities A software receiver allows modifications and inspections with flexibility in design upgradability and experimentation possibilities compared to integrated circuits With GNSS SDR researchers and technology enthusiasts can easily change the implementation of a certain functional block and assess the impact of that change on the whole receiver performance said Pau Closas GNSS SDR scientific advisor and Head of the Statistical Inference Department at CTTC This paves the way to innovative mass market industrial and scientific applications that could make use of Galileo signals but require non standard features which are not present in mass market receivers nor in costly professional equipment The first Galileo based positioning fix obtained by Javier Arribas using a general purpose GNSS antenna and a RF front end connected to a commodity PC running GNSS SDR represents an important milestone First GNSS SDR Galileo standalone position fix using the four available satellites Position obtained at the CTTC headquarters on 2013 Nov 10 15 52 14 UTC in the research on GNSS receiver design Next steps will be devoted to provide outputs in standard formats that will allow the application of geodesic grade tools for extremely precise positioning on the order of centimeters and higher degrees of reliability Arribas said The source code released under the GNU General Public License GPL secures practical usability inspection and continuous improvement by the research community GNSS SDR 2D ENU coordinates precision for the Galileo position fix www gpsworld com January 2014 GPS World 29