GPS software

Fastrax has introduced a software-based GPS receiver with the aim of extending the use of location-based services in consumer electronics.

Optimised in performance, footprint, cost efficiency and flexibility, the software is expected to increase the speed of adoption of GPS functionalities beyond the highest end mobile phones and laptop computers. Target platforms include mid-tier phones, digital cameras, personal navigation devices and other devices used while on the move.

While traditional GPS solutions require the integration of a hardware component, making the design more complex and adding to the cost, a software-based solution is cheaper with adjustable features.

The processor requirement for the software is roughly 10 MIPS (million instructions per second) per tracked satellite. The software GPS solutions already introduced are typically developed based on PC solutions, originally built without explicit need to optimise power drain or processor use.

According to the company, the software will reduce the bill of materials to less than 3 USD per device, while still offering a similar level of GPS performance as hardware-based standalone GPS receivers.

With a cold start sensitivity of -144 dBm and a navigation sensitivity of -162 dBm, the package is said to be one of the best performing GPS solutions available.

The software enables the use of hardware accelerators on platforms that do not have the processing power to run a full software GPS solution. Accelerated software GPS reduces the CPU load to roughly 1 MIPS per tracked satellite by performing the correlation process on hardware, either in the RF front-end chip or in the host processor.

To ease the deployment in different kinds of devices, the Software GPS and the Accelerated Software GPS are configurable to obtain the best performance on every platform, depending on processing power and memory available.