SNAPTRACK TOUTS MORE SENSITIVE GPS SOLUTION
Jan. 10, 2001 (Global Positioning & Navigation News, Vol. 11, No. 1 via COMTEX) -- Location technology developer SnapTrack has unveiled a new GPS design for wireless telecom applications. But the company may have hit upon a revenue source that could extend its reach beyond wireless location infrastructure for emergency E-911 callers and commercial navigation services.
SnapTrack, a unit of wireless chip developer, Qualcomm [QCOM], capped the year 2000 with the announcement of SnapCore, the hardware/software design which it hopes will drive its server-based location technology to new markets, such as the global system for mobile communications (GSM) used in Europe.
SnapCore is a "pure GPS implementation" that can be used with a variety of wireless standards, such as time division multiple access (TDMA), the Japanese PDC standard, GSM, or with applications that use combinations of standards, says Tom Wrappe, vice president of product and program management with SnapTrack. "We think this is a big part of the answer for Europe," he says.
SnapCore allows faster time-to-first-fix (TTFF) from a cold start (20 to 40 seconds) and higher signal sensitivity in autonomous mode (without network assistance), compared with conventional GPS, Wrappe adds. SnapTrack has lab prototypes that "can actually acquire a signal inside of a building, without network assist," he says. "That's unheard of."
The interesting thing is that, in stand-alone GPS operation, time-to- first-fix is "faster than anybody else's," says Will Strauss, semiconductor analyst and president of Forward Concepts in Tempe, Ariz. With network assistance, SnapCore's TTFF is shortened by a factor of 10."
Although SnapTrack stresses wireless uses, Strauss sees potential for licensing revenues in other applications. "They've got an approach that appears to be more universal than just for the SnapTrack [communications infrastructure] solution," he says.
Snapcore's real innovation is its "matched filter engine," which allows higher performance than traditional receivers, for equivalent semiconductor size, Wrappe says. A conventional autonomous GPS receiver contains from 100 to 800 correlators implemented in hardware. (Correlators - with software assistance - execute a mathematical algorithm to pull the GPS signal out of the noise.) But SnapCore boasts the equivalent of more than 8,000 correlators, while keeping the hardware engine very small. The new SnapCore architecture will allow handset- based location to operate in standalone GPS mode - good for areas without cellular coverage - as well as with various degrees of network assist.
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