Product category:
Communications ICs (Wireless)
News Release from: Atheros Communications | Subject: AR1511
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 29 April 2008
Second-generation receiver IC upgrades
GPS
GPS solutions provide enhanced design flexibility with multiple options for either stand-alone or host-dependent applications.
Atheros Communications has added a new member to its Radio-on-Chip for Mobile (ROCm) family of GPS devices for mobile phones, personal navigation devices and personal media players The AR1511 is a second-generation single-chip GPS receiver that is complemented by the Orion 3.0 software suite
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 26 Apr 2006 at 8.00am (UK)
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This combination is ideally suited for integrating advanced navigation functions into mobile devices, with state-of-the-art assisted GPS (AGPS) technology, advanced parallel search, and industry-leading tracking sensitivity of -160dBm, which together enable the most rapid and accurate location determination while conserving device battery power.
Atheros' latest ROCm GPS offering provides developers with turnkey high-performance options for both stand-alone and host-dependent designs.
This platform flexibility enables customers to design a wide variety of location-aware devices and form factors, giving Atheros a significantly expanded GPS market opportunity.
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The AR1511 and Orion 3.0 combination contains new patent-pending features specifically designed to address the most challenging navigation environments.
These enhancements provide considerable performance advances with time to first-fix (TTFF) reacquisition times reduced by nearly half, and positional accuracy increased by more than 50%.
"With the AR1511 and Orion 3.0 combo, Atheros is delivering state-of-the-art AGPS for today's cellphone, PND and PMP users, enabling quicker fix times that result in extended battery life", says Greg Winner, General Manager of Atheros' GPS business unit.
"Unlike most GPS silicon providers, we offer both stand-alone and hosted designs that enable our customers to add GPS to virtually any type of mobile consumer device".
Atheros' Assisted GPS (AGPS) options speed navigation in challenging environments - indoors, in urban canyons and in other locations where broadcast satellite signals are obscured.
AGPS can also accelerate the navigation process in conditions where broadcast ephemeris is available, by quickly securing location information from nonbroadcast sources, thus reducing power consumed in satellite search mode.
Mobile networks can enable handsets with ephemeris data, satellite orbital information, more quickly than it can be downloaded directly from the satellites.
The AR1511 and Orion 3.0 combo provides GSM handsets with AGPS, exceeding the industry-standard 3GPP specifications and the Secure User Plane for Location (SUPL) requirements, which facilitate communications between satellite location servers and GSM handsets.
Bluetooth-enabled PNDs and PMPs can also access cellular-based ephemeris by connecting through a nearby handset.
Atheros' new solution also provides conventional AGPS, access to real-time ephemeris over the Internet for PNDs, PMPs and PCs - virtually any location-aware device that has Internet access over Wi-Fi.
This allows GPS devices to have intermittent connectivity to real-time Internet-accessed ephemeris when in the presence of a Wi-Fi access point, thus enabling accelerated location fixes, enhanced accuracy and reduced battery power.
The AR1511 and Orion 3.0 combo also supports extended ephemeris, stored satellite orbital data, for any location-aware device.
This feature leverages RX Networks GPStream technology to accelerate TTFF and reacquisition times with high location accuracy.
Extended ephemeris can be downloaded using wired or wireless connections from Internet- or cellular-based servers.
The data is stored and provides tracking ability for up to seven days, minimising the device's need to scan the sky or frequently access networks to obtain real-time location information.
The GPStream technology delivers ephemeris in highly compact 2Kbyte files versus competing solutions which employ bulky 40-50Kbyte files, reducing the system memory requirement and demand on service provider networks.
Like other forms of AGPS, extended ephemeris provides the added benefit of prolonging battery life through quicker location fixes.
Atheros' ROCm portfolio, consisting of mobile solutions for all AGPS connectivity modes, including GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, provides design and performance synergies to readily enhance the design process and user experience.
The AR1511/Orion 3.0 combo features Atheros' patent-pending advanced parallel search, which uses eight search engines teamed with 12 highly sensitive tracking engines.
This enhanced approach to search results in significant performance advantages - reducing reacquisition time by nearly half and increasing positional accuracy by more than 50% in challenging environments.
Atheros' unique search capability offers considerably lower power consumption than competing solutions that rely on thousands of correlators to calculate positioning, resulting in prolonged searches.
Atheros latest GPS solutions provide enhanced design flexibility with multiple options for either stand-alone or host-dependent applications.
The AR1511 comes in a 5 x 5mm CSP for stand-alone and hosted configurations, or a 10 x 10mm BGA package for stand-alone and hosted configurations on low-cost PCBs.
The AR1511F comes in a 7 x 7mm BGA package with integrated DSP and stacked Flash die for small-form-factor stand-alone configurations.
This AR1511F delivers GPS functionality without taxing the host processor and memory, and eliminates the need for dedicated Flash or fixed ROM.
The chip provides significant advantages over competitive ROM-based solutions, with SDK support, selectable profiles and the ability to easily update software.
Macronix is partnered with Atheros to provide the cost-efficient 1.8V, 8Mbit MX29SL802CBXHI-90G Flash option for stand-alone applications.
Atheros' new GPS solutions also employ worldwide satellite-based augmentation systems (SBAS) to ensure the greatest accuracy, integrity and availability of GPS information within specific geographies.
Systems supported by the Orion 3.0 software include WAAS (North America), MSAS (Japan) and Egnos (Europe).
The AR1511 CSP package is pin-compatible to the uN3010 CSP package and provides an easy migration path from any existing design based on Atheros' first-generation, single-chip GPS solution.
The AR1511/Orion 3.0 package will sample to customers in Q2 2008.
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