u-blox kicks out 50-channel LEA-5 GPS module

by Darren Murph posted Nov 29th 2007 at 1:53PM

It's been a hot minute since we've heard from u-blox, but the outfit definitely caught our attention thanks to a new 50-channel GPS receiver that "boasts an acquisition performance of less than one second" when combined with its AssistNow A-GPS service. These fifth-generation devices have been stuffed into the industry standard LEA form factor, which should make embedding them into a wide range of automotive, consumer and industrial applications a breeze. Moreover, it sports a -160 dBm acquisition and tracking sensitivity, operating temperature range of -40 to 85°C and a Flash EPROM that allows for easy firmware upgrades in the future. Currently, engineering samples of the 17- x 22-millimeter chips can be ordered for $119 apiece, but they don't look to be shipping (let alone finding their way into consumer devices) until January of next year.

[Via NaviGadget]

Filed under: GPS

Tags: gps, gps receiver, GpsReceiver, LEA-5, u-blox

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

Wodheila @ Nov 29th 2007 2:02PM

Just "not in time" to infect the Christmas inventory.

Neutral

Tom F @ Nov 29th 2007 2:18PM

50 Channels? Aren't there only like 30 working GPS satellites? Does this use something other then the L1 signal? maybe L2?

Highly Ranked

Tim @ Nov 29th 2007 3:11PM

This receiver supports both GPS L1 and Galileo L1 signals (each having about 30 satellites, plus the WAAS sats, and I'm not sure, but it may use ground based stations as well) adding up to way over 50 even though you'll never see more than 50% at anyone time. The 50 channels refers to the number of parallel radio contacts it can maintain, while it can aquire 32 channels at a time, and only ever use 16 actual satellites to compute a position (from the data sheet). The benefit being that it can switch new satellites in instantly as they come into view (because it was tracking them even when they had poor signal strength), and track older ones longer in case you (or they) move back into view.

Neutral

Fuzzball @ Nov 29th 2007 6:12PM

I thought WAAS was the ground base stations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Area_Augmentation_System

Neutral

Cal @ Nov 29th 2007 8:02PM

I have one of these babies sitting in front of me on my desk right now! They shipped it last week even though they said it was backordered.

Think I'll tear into it and see how rad it really is.

Neutral

Tim @ Nov 29th 2007 8:11PM

@Fuzzball:

Nope. From your Wikipedia link: "As with GPS in general, WAAS is composed of three main segments; the Ground segment, the Space segment, and the User segment."

Accordingly the 'space' segment consists of two WAAS satellites in geosynchronous orbit right now. These are in addition to the fleet of GPS satellites.

In addition to WAAS, their are some other less well known augmentation systems such as EGNOS which is Europe's version, and LAAS which is a ground based localized version.

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