bluetooth GPS receiver that supports A-GPS?
Published on June 16th, 2007 in bluetooth, gps navigation
This bluetooth GPS receiver from EuroTronics, called Blumax, support A-GPS technology according to their product page. This is a bit confusing for us since we know A-GPS technology relies on cellular network towers to help get a position fix. And in no where there is a mention of this device supporting any kind of SIM card.
The rest of the specs however are decent considering it uses high sensitivity SiRF Star III receiver, 850mAh battery that can recharge in 2 hours and last up to 9, and a power saving feature that turns the power OFF after Bluetooth being disconnected for 5 minutes.
Further investigation reveals the A-GPS claim is not mentioned anywhere on the box either. Blumax bluetooth GPS receiver sells for £46 ($90) in the U.K.
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GPS is a satellite based positioning system. Assisted GPS, or A-GPS was introduced to enhance performance.
The development of A-GPS was accelerated by the U.S. FCC’s E911 mandate requiring the position of a cell phone to be available to emergency call dispatchers.
Conventional GPS had difficulty providing reliable positions in environments surrounded by tall buildings - the so-called ‘urban canyon’, as well as indoors and under heavy tree cover.
Under these conditions, the GPS signal is often of very poor quality, making it hard for receivers to obtain a position. In addition, when first turned on in these conditions, a non-A-GPS may not be able to download the orbital information from the GPS satellites, rendering it unable to function until it has nearly a minutes clear signal.
An A-GPS receiver can address these problems in several ways, using an Assistance Server:
The Assistance Server has a good satellite signal, and lots of computation power, so it can compare fragmentary signals relayed to it by cell phones, with the satellite signal it receives directly, and then inform the cell phone or emergency services of the cell phones position.
It can supply orbital data for the GPS satellites to the cell phone, enabling the cell phone to lock to the satellites when it otherwise could not, and autonomously calculate its position.
It can have better knowledge of ionospheric conditions and other errors affecting the GPS signal than the cell phone alone, enabling more precise calculation of position.
Some A-GPS solutions require an active connection to a cell phone network to function, in others [1] [2] it simply makes positioning faster more accurate, but is not required.
As an additional benefit, it can reduce both the amount of CPU and programming required for a GPS Phone by offloading most of the work onto the assistance server. (This is not a large amount for a basic GPS - many early GPSs ran on 386/16 or similar hardware).
Also see: http://www.globallocate.com/A-GPS/A-GPS_Frameset.htm
(Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-GPS)
January 4th, 2008 at 10:52 am
Well seeing as it’s a bluetooth GPS receiver intended to connect with a mobile phone or PDA phone, i assumed that the A-GPS ability is used via the phone in conjunction with the reciever. Just like the N95, and 6110 nokias which have a GPS built in, and can use AGPS.