u-blox ultra-low power GPS technology platform

Thalwil, Switzerland, September 1, 2009 – u-blox, a leading provider of embedded GPS receiver and wireless semiconductors and solutions, is proud to announce the upgrade of its core CMOS technology to u-blox 6. Products based on u-blox 6 will have dramatically reduced power requirements thanks to new intelligent power management features. The innovations enable significantly extended battery life for power-critical GPS applications.

With the extension of the acquisition engine to over 2 million correlators, the new chip exhibits stronger acquisition capability of weak signals and a shorter time to first fix. In addition to GPS, u-blox 6 is future-proofed for the upcoming new European satellite system GALILEO.

u-blox 6 also supports the company’s proprietary “YUMA” GPS software and service, an instantaneous and ultra low power location capture solution based on u-blox’ breakthrough “Capture & Process” technology. Capture & Process is the ideal and lowest power solution for battery-powered applications such as tracking and photo geotagging.

First samples of GPS receiver UBX-G6010 single-chip and UBX-G6000/G0010 chipset are available by end-2009 for customer evaluation, with the LEA and NEO GPS receiver module families upgraded shortly afterwards. ANTARIS 4 and u-blox 5 family products remain fully supported.

“Moving on to u-blox 6 is an important milestone for u-blox and our customers as market demand increases for GPS solutions with high sensitivity, long battery life and instant location capture. u-blox 6 based products will bring significant benefits to OEMs of real-time GPS products as well as to extremely low-power logger applications requiring weeks or months of battery life”, said Andreas Thiel, Executive Vice President R&D Hardware, and Co-founder of u-blox.

Existing u-blox customers will benefit from the pin-to-pin compatible products. Key application areas for u-blox 6 based products include ultra-low power GPS loggers, asset and fleet management, people and animal trackers, automotive GPS black boxes, personal navigation and recreational devices as well as cameras and camera phones with geotagging capability. u-blox 6 ICs will be available in standard and automotive grade versions.