u-blox Announces Dual GPS and Galileo Chip Featuring Acquisition Time of Under 1 Second

u-blox Announces Dual GPS and Galileo Chip Featuring Acquisition Time of Under 1 Second

September 25, 2006

    THALWIL, Switzerland, Sept. 25 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ --
u-blox AG, the leading Swiss provider of innovative GPS
receiver technology, today announced the u-blox 5 family of
GPS and Galileo-ready single chips and chipsets featuring an
acquisition performance of under 1 second. The new chips
also feature SuperSense(R) -160 dBm acquisition and
tracking sensitivity, power needs of less than 50 mW and a
footprint smaller than 100 mm2, making u-blox 5 receivers
ideal for PDAs, personal navigation devices, cameras, cell
phones, media players and other battery-operated portable
devices.

    "This is the fastest, most sensitive GPS chip on
the market today, and among the smallest and most power
efficient, making it ideally suited for use in mass market
consumer electronic devices," said u-blox Chief
Executive, Thomas Seiler. "This breakthrough
technology is yet another endorsement of the strength of
u-blox' research and development team."

    u-blox 5's ultra-fast acquisition time is due to its
50-channel architecture with over 1 million correlators and
separate acquisition and tracking engines, capable of
massively parallel searches.

    A built-in power management unit features a DC/DC
converter that optimizes power use across a single voltage
source. The chip's ultra-low power needs ensure long
battery times for PDAs, smart phones and other
battery-operated handheld devices. u-blox 5 has a
fractional N clock synthesizer that supports the common
cell phone reference frequencies. Moreover, u-blox' new
generation supports assisted GPS (A-GPS) services such as
AssistNow(TM) and OMA/SUPL standards and exceeds
performance requirements for international A-GPS standards
including 3GPP TS 25.171, TIA 916 and E911 Phase II.

    u-blox 5 GPS receivers come in single chip and chipset
packages. A highly integrated architecture keeps costs to a
bare minimum by reducing the bill of materials to as few as
17 passive external components and keeping the footprint
small. The cost-optimized UBX-G5010 single chip has a
56-pin QFN package that measures a mere 8 x 8 mm. Customers
who prefer chipsets with an optional Flash memory can
combine the 9 x 9 mm UBX-G5000 100-pin BGA baseband chip
and the 4 x 4 mm UBX-G0010 24-pin QFN RF front-end. Both
the single chip and the chipset support passive antennas
with their integrated low-noise amplifier.

    The chips' software contains an innovative jamming
suppression mechanism that automatically filters signals
from interfering sources, thus maintaining high GPS
performance no matter what the environment. A robust
multipath detection and elimination mechanism endows u-blox
5 chips with best-in-class navigation in urban canyons. 

    u-blox 5 products will be capable, via a simple
software upgrade, of receiving and processing L1 Galileo
signals once they become available. The combination of GPS
and Galileo signals will bring even better coverage,
reliability and navigation accuracy.

    Engineering samples will be available in the first
quarter of 2007. 

    (A photograph can be downloaded from 
     http://www.u-blox.com/news/u-blox_5.jpg )

    About u-blox

    u-blox is an international company headquartered in
Switzerland, with sales organizations in the Americas,
Europe and Asia. Founded in 1997, u-blox develops leading
positioning technology, products and services based on
Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), including GPS
and Galileo, for the automotive and mobile communications
markets. For more information, please visit
http://www.u-blox.com 

    For more information, please contact:

     Georg zur Bonsen
     Product Management
     Tel:   [phone]
     Email: [e-mail]

     Alicia Montoya
     Marketing Communications
     Tel:   [phone]
     Email: [e-mail]

SOURCE  u-blox AG