Wacky defense contractor
QinetiQ (which also make
3D shoe sizers) continues to angle for a piece of that sweet military-industrial pie with the release of the Ocellus S100, a super sensitive GPS tracker. Unlike normal GPS units, which max out around -160dBW of signal sensitivity, the S100 gets all the way to -189dBW for tracking and -185dBW for acquisition (remember, the scale is logarithmic, so that's a big jump). The increased sensitivity means that the unit can be used to track subjects under heavy foliage, in "urban canyons," indoors, and other places where regular GPS units tend to wonk out. The unit is so sensitive, in fact, that QinetiQ claims that it can be mounted underneath a vehicle and still provide location data from GPS signals bouncing off the roadway. The motion-activated unit sends location data back to HQ via GPRS, falling back to SMS to report the target's location, if needed. Hmm, looks like the tinfoil hat crowd bought up all those
black-market cellphone jammers for a reason.
[Via
Navigadget]
posted May 24th 2007 8:49AM
Bourne is in trouble now..
'I' before 'E' EXCEPT after 'C'!
Looks like a coffin for the Littles
hmm
this would be from the uk company that used to be dera right?
they have a data sheet
http://www.qinetiq.com/home/commercial/gps_and_rfid/gps/GPS_Products/high_sensitivity_gps.Par.0002.File.pdf.
This is for the board on its own which has uarts so you can build it into almost anything ...
Nothing special about this receiver, especially not its sensitivity.
What makes you think that normal GPS units max out at 160 dbW? You are confusing dBm and dBW, so you have to add or substract 30 to compare them. Do your homework before posting an article.
Sirf III receivers usually have a tracking sensitivity -189 dBW (-159 dBm). Antaris 4 e.g. with -188 dbW (-159 dbM). So i see no difference to existing receiver, using dbW data for sensitivity is for marketing reasons.
While your numbers are correct, I did convert everything to dBW, because that's what manufacturers tend to use. The SIRFstar III has an acquisition sensitivity of -172dBW, which is still much less than the -185dBW QinetiQ claims for the Ocellus S100. The tracking sensitivities are indeed similar. Atmel doesn't have acquisition sensitivity published for the Antaris 4. Only time will tell if the Ocellus S100 is indeed as sensitive as QinetiQ claims.
According to http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=23286, their chip is actually less sensitive than SiRFStarIII, they just use dBW instead of dBm for the measurement. SiRFStarIII is -159dBm (-189dBW) and QinetiQ Q20 is -155dBm (-185dBW).
wow my $60 bluetooth GPS gets signal in my glovebox, console, and even under the seat.
In fact my last 3 all get a minimum of 7 satellites when buried in the depths of my console.