GPS location processor ensures continuous location awareness

Paul Boughton
CSR is launching the SiRFstarIV GSD4e GPS location processor, the newest member of the recently launched SiRFstarIV architecture, an innovation that the company says will redefine the meaning of 'location awareness' for mobile devices. Building on the SiRFstarIV architecture's high-performance and micro-power capabilities, the GSD4e adds a built-in CPU and innovations such as SiRF Georecov technology that are optimised to ensure continuous location awareness in a new breed of digital cameras, portable game consoles, wearable and other consumer devices, without loading the host processor.
 
Kanwar Chadha, chief marketing officer for CSR and founder of SiRF, states: "Adding the GSD4e to our SiRFstarIV portfolio gives our customers the choice of both plug-in and host-based implementations of our breakthrough location awareness technology for greater flexibility in creating a variety of geo-aware mobile devices, furthering our vision of making location truly a part of everyday life. And because it has a built-in processor, the GSD4e makes it easy to quickly integrate location awareness into existing platforms, enables development of innovative modules and products with customisable differentiation and provides our extensive SiRFstarIII customer community with a seamless upgrade path."
 
Leading module vendors worldwide, including Vincotech, Navman Wireless, Kyocera, Mitsumi and Semco, are said to be designing modules with the GSD4e in Q4 2009, accelerating time to market for SiRFstarIV-enabled consumer products.
 
The GSD4e's innovative adaptive accuracy and SiRF Georecov technologies make it possible to geo-tag images or videos with a camera or camcorder and improve the accuracy as better GPS information becomes available. It also enables people to locate social networking friends on a smartphone, track a jogging course with a wearable device, perform location-based searches with a laptop or netbook or find their way through buildings and urban canyons with a pedestrian navigation system. And it can do all these things in everyday environments and, in many cases, even if the device has been turned off for weeks or months. CSR says that unlike other GPS systems on the market today that can fail to provide any location fix at all, the GSD4e ensures that devices are on the 'location grid' even in extremely low signal conditions. And the GSD4e's sophisticated motion-sensing algorithms ensure advanced power management and stable, accurate positioning, even when standing still.
 
Much broader in applicability, easier to design and more flexible than host-based architectures, the GSD4e is a complete position-velocity-time (PVT) system. It not only opens the door to a new class of location-aware consumer devices, but also raises the performance bar in the traditional GPS engine market for smartphones, GPS modules, multi-radio modules and similar applications. The GSD4e consumes only 8mW in 1Hz tricklepower mode and can maintain hot-start conditions continuously in SiRFaware mode while drawing as little as 50-400microamps. Its enhanced SiRFNavPlus navigation engine ensures seamless car and pedestrian navigation in tough urban canyon and dense foliage environments.
 
The CSR SiRFstarIV GSD4e single-chip GPS engine with external flash memory is available in sample quantities already. The ROM version will be available later in the fourth quarter of 2009. Production quantities are scheduled for the first quarter of 2010.
 
For more information, visit www.csr.com

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