NaviGadget

SiRF’s InstantFixII which was announced this week promises to reduce warm start time to as low as 5 seconds from just over 30 seconds. The new improved technology makes the use of personal navigation devices even suitable for bank robbers allowing them to find the quickest route in their getaway cars.

SiRFInstantFixII accomplishes this using their special patent-pending algorithms that enable GPS navigation systems to predict the behavior GPS satellites during the day and ‘guess’ their position in the sky for up to three days. SiRFInstantFixII continuously refines its calculations based on the latest data it receives from the satellites being tracked every time the PND (personal/portable navigation device) is used. SiRFInstantFixII performs these calculations completely autonomously, without ever needing updates of any kind from a network which means it doesn’t work like A-GPS but promises the same satellite fix times…

While in theory determining location using GPS satellites is a simple process of triangulation, the reality is much more complex. First, the GPS receiver needs to find and “lock” onto enough satellites to be able to calculate its location, a process called acquisition. With its 200,000 correlators, SiRF’s innovative SiRFstarIII architecture made the acquisition of satellites very fast. To calculate accurate position, however, the GPS receiver needs to know where each of these GPS satellites is in the sky with a very high degree of accuracy.

Every satellite requires 30 seconds to broadcast its precise location, and the GPS receiver must be able to download this data from each satellite it needs for a fix. This data is typically valid only for two to three hours. If anything interrupts the signal while receiving this data, such as a building or tree, the receiver has to wait another 30 seconds to completely download the data from the satellite. In real-world conditions, where the GPS receiver is usually moving, it can take up to several minutes to obtain all the data the receiver needs to perform its calculations and obtain a fix, resulting in a long period with a great deal of location uncertainty before navigation can begin.

Using SiRFInstantFixII, affordable PNDs can not only start tracking satellites and navigating more quickly, they can do it using signals much weaker than those needed to obtain satellite position data the traditional way, removing the barrier that often stands in the way of successfully navigating under tough GPS signal conditions.

We predict the new technology will become popular quite fast since one of the biggest annoyances using a GPS navigation system is the wait once your turn on your device…via

• new Mio Moov
• new Becker Z101 and Z200
• SiRFprima supports GPS and Galileo
• E-Ten G500 reviewed
• the new MG-950D from Mainnav

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 3rd, 2008 at 9:41 am and is filed under gps navigation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.