u-blox, a provider of fabless semiconductor positioning systems, has introduced LEON, a new surface-mount GSM transceiver module.
u-blox said that the module is ideal for cost-sensitive industrial applications such as fleet management, asset and personnel tracking, vehicle recovery, point-of-sales terminals and metering.
According to the company, the modules’ small footprint of only 18.9 x 29.5 x 2.84mm and SMT pads on only two sides of the package is expected to result in simple mounting, cheaper PCB layout and quality control as compared to ball-grid or land-grid array systems.
LEON features a low current consumption (1.6mA in standby mode), and wide operating temperature, the company said. The module supports GPRS class 10 as well as voice communications and comes equipped with embedded TCP/IP stack and AssistNow client, added u-blox.
Thomas Seiler, CEO of u-blox, said: Establishing core competencies in both GPS and GSM is a key part of u-blox’s strategy to provide the smallest, highest-performance, most cost-effective module solution to the fast-growing mobile tracking market. Customers are increasingly demanding GPS with mobile connectivity to locate, track and manage valuable assets. The combined GSM/GPS technologies from a single supplier will meet our customers’ needs for faster time-to-market, and lower production costs.
