Sony has unveiled two low power consuming Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver LSIs and one GNSS Receiver Module for use in the smartphones and mobile products.
The company claims that the GNSS receiver uses 10mW of power to operate and will be launched from June 2013.
The manufacturer has designed the RF circuits of the receiver with the low-power AD converters, low noise amplifiers and electronic circuit phase-locked loops (PLL) and a low-power digital circuit design that controls the power supply and clock for each separate function block.
Feature of the LSIs includes Sensor Fusion that combines information received from multiple smartphone sensors such as accelerometers, magnetic sensors and gyro sensors for arithmetic processing to obtain information of the location.
The receivers are compatible with Global Positioning System (GPS), Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS), Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS) and satellite-based augmentation system (SBAS) and the Indoor Messaging System (IMES).
Sony said that the in RF circuits consume more than 10mW of power alone in conventional system, but the the Sony’s entire GNSS Receiver LSI unit consumes less than 10mW.
The technology will be able to track location even while in indoors, or other environments where there is low satellite signal reception, by generating autonomous navigation (‘dead reckoning’) to deliver precise positional information.
