Always-On™ GPS
Awareness of GPS technology amongst the general public started growing in the early 1990’s with the introduction of satellite navigation into cars. Over time, integrated units have been giving way to dashboard mounted personal navigation devices (PND’s) which have their own internal battery and hence can be carried away from the car and operate independently for a short time – until the battery runs down and the unit needs recharging.
The growth in popularity of PND’s is now stimulating the introduction of GPS receivers into cellphones. Already it is possible to run navigation applications on a GPS-equipped cellphone that rival the performance of a stand-alone PND. The power consumption of a GPS receiver, however, consumes a significant portion of the total power budget in a cellphone and so the GPS remains switched-off until the user starts-up the navigation application. Once the GPS is enabled, the cellphone battery drains rapidly; typically navigation on a phone operates for just a few hours before the phone’s battery needs recharging.
A GPS receiver built using Air’s GPS receiver technology need never be switched off. Always-On™ technology means that the power consumption when tracking the location of the device is around 2 orders of magnitude LOWER than conventional GPS solutions.
This has two important benefits:
- CONTINUOUS LOCATION: For the first time, mobile, battery operated devices can be continuously aware of their location. In addition to supporting established applications such as navigation, this will stimulate a new generation of proactive location based applications and services which don’t need to wait for an input from the user.
- INSTANT LOCATION: When first enabled, conventional GPS receivers can take many minutes to calculate their location (depending on signal conditions). An Always-On™ GPS receiver is continuously aware of its location – hence the location information is always instantly available on demand.
The availability of Instant and Continuous location information in all kinds of mobile, battery operated devices including cellphones, cameras, watches, games consoles (and many more …) will find an unimaginable number of uses beyond just navigation.