Tag: lane-level accuracy

Swift Navigation adds tiers, BeiDou support to Skylark service

(Image: Swift Navigation)

Swift Navigation has expanded the capabilities of its Skylark precise positioning service to several product tiers. With new services providing real-time kinematic (RTK) and differential GNSS (DGNSS) options, Swift meets the broadening needs of its growing customer base.

In addition, new BeiDou signal support and regional coverage has been added.

Skylark is Swift’s cloud-based GNSS corrections service designed to deliver affordability, high accuracy and fast convergence, eliminating the complexity of deploying and maintaining GNSS networks. The expansion of Skylark’s capabilities makes it possible for customers across industries to benefit from seamless corrections to applications across the globe, the company said.

Skylark RTK delivers Swift’s highest tier of performance to third-party GNSS receivers. Compatible with leading RTK receivers on the market, Skylark RTK delivers corrections for applications that require sub-2 cm accuracy, including agriculture, machine control, drones and robotics in the United States, Europe and select Asian countries.

Skylark DGNSS is suitable for mobile applications, delivering real-time, high-reliability differential GNSS corrections to mobile handsets, positioning engine modules and mass-market applications. Skylark DGNSS enables lane-level location accuracy, in turn enabling new consumer location experiences and improving location-based services to increase efficiency on a global basis.

With BeiDou coverage already available across the United States, Japan and Korea, Swift has now added BeiDou signal support for the European Union, supplementing existing support for Galileo and GPS by providing corrections for GPS L1/L2/L5, Galileo E1/E5b/E5a and BeiDou B1/B2a. In addition, support for BeiDou B1C has been added to all regions.

These additions help support newer mass-market RTK-enabled receivers to achieve high-accuracy performance in difficult GNSS environments and continue to push the envelope for positioning accuracy.

“Swift was founded on the notion of improving GNSS positioning performance for mass-market applications,” said Holger Ippach, executive vice president of product, Swift Navigation . “We are pleased to expand the functionality of Skylark to improve the positioning functionality for many more customers across the globe.”

The suite of Skylark products was built from the ground up for scale, resilience and ease of integration. Skylark delivers seamless corrections to continents and countries across the globe including the United States, Europe, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Australia.

November 28, 2022
Qualcomm and Trimble join on meter-level location for smartphones

Photo: simon2579/ iStock/Getty Images Plus/Getty Images

The Trimble RTX GNSS correction service will soon be available for Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and Snapdragon 888 Mobile Platforms from Qualcomm Technologies Inc.

Expected to be available in the second quarter of this year, Trimble’s RTX service will enable superior location capabilities in premium Android smartphones worldwide.

The integration of Trimble RTX GNSS technology, a correction services platform, with Snapdragon contributes to a higher quality, more accurate location-based user experiences such as car navigation with lane-level guidance.

Coupling the Trimble RTX technology with premium Snapdragon Mobile Platforms will enable smartphone manufacturers, service providers and application developers using Snapdragon to provide mobile users with robust meter-level accuracy (or about 3 feet) when used with a Trimble RTX-based correction service. This represents a five times improvement in location accuracy compared to typical accuracy.

Location information accuracy can significantly improve the smartphone’s user experience when using mapping, driving or other mobile applications. For example, with more accurate positioning for a ridesharing app, both driver and rider can have a better experience when the pick-up destination is more precisely displayed. In addition, lane-level accuracy enables drivers to gain greater map detail and more accurate directions when using real-time navigation applications.

The new collaboration expands Trimble’s existing relationship with Qualcomm Technologies to provide high-accuracy positioning solutions for connected vehicles, advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving solutions to automotive OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers.

“Trimble and Qualcomm Technologies have a history of innovation in mobile location technologies, both separately and collaboratively,” said Lisa Wetherbee, general manager of Trimble Advanced Positioning. “Together, we are boosting premium Android phone functionality, helping mobile applications provide better information about the user’s immediate surroundings.”

“Precise positioning, where accuracies are down to a meter or less, is a necessary capability in next-gen premium Android phones, providing better mapping, more accurate navigation and new exciting services to consumers,” said Francesco Grilli, vice president, product management, Qualcomm Technologies. “Snapdragon is again taking location-based experiences to a new level through this collaboration with Trimble.”

March 22, 2022
Aceinna launches turnkey lane-level accuracy solution at CES

Photo: Aceinna

Aceinna Inc. has announced the INS401 INS and GNSS/RTK, a turnkey solution for autonomous vehicle precise positioning. Aceinna made the announcement at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) taking place this week in Las Vegas.

The INS401 is part of Aceinna’s new product portfolio that provides high accuracy and high integrity localization for developers and manufacturers of advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomy solutions for vehicles of all types.

The INS401 is a high-performance inertial navigation system (INS) with a dual-frequency GNSS receiver enabled with real-time kinematic (RTK). It also features triple-redundant inertial sensors and a positioning engine. It is designed for use in Level 2 and higher ADAS and other high-volume applications requiring precise position information.

The INS401 provides centimeter-level accuracy, enhanced reliability and superior performance during GNSS outages. The dead-reckoning solution delivers strong performance in GNSS-challenged urban environments.

The INS401 is specifically developed for automotive applications using automotive-qualified components and is certified to ASIL-B level according to ISO26262.

INS401 is small, compact and turnkey with a rugged aluminum housing. It includes everything needed for design and development of a robust navigation system with a flexible platform enabling easy customization for fast time to market. The included integrity engine guarantees zero performance failure.

“Based on a decade-long history in ADAS and safety applications, Aceinna is ready for today’s and future autonomous mobility applications,” said Wade Appelman, president and COO of Aceinna. “The INS401 is our next step forward, delivering complex INS/RTK technology to mass markets with turnkey products.”

January 5, 2022
SBG Systems drives GNSS+inertial in Paris

Autonomous vehicles require lane-level accuracy at all times and in all conditions. However, under many conditions, such as in urban canyons and tunnels, they may lose line-of-sight to enough GNSS satellites to achieve accurate and robust positioning or may have no signal at all. In these situations, they need data from other sensors, including an odometer and an inertial measurement unit (IMU). Creating reliable and safe autonomous navigation requires fusing GNSS and inertial technology in a multi-layered system.

SBG Systems and its partners LeoDrive.ai and Intempora, have been doing this to develop solutions for autonomous vehicles. SBG’s technology enables multi-sensor integration while addressing such autonomous navigation challenges as time synchronization, integrity, precise positioning and high-definition mapping.

“To ensure performance and build trust, we assemble our own IMUs from carefully selected industrial-grade parts, then we calibrate all our products individually,” said Laurent Le Thuant, business manager for SBG, in a recent webinar.

For safe operation, Le Thuant explained, the vehicle’s true positional error (PE) must be smaller than its protection level (PL), which in turn must be smaller than its alert limit (AL): PE < PL < AL. Otherwise, the solution is declared unavailable or reports misleading information.

In automotive tests conducted in a business district near Paris, an SBG vehicle was equipped with both a GNSS-only, automotive-grade multiband RTK receiver equipped with a PL determination algorithm and an RTK GNSS receiver tightly-coupled with an IMU and an odometry input. A comparison showed that the former was not suited for self-driving, while the latter significantly improved the solution availability, accuracy and protection levels.

For self-driving in the most severe conditions, even this solution requires integration of supplementary sensors, such as cameras, lidars and radars for precise localization.

December 28, 2021
Swift travels across US with Skylark lane-level positioning
Swift’s first-of-its-kind, cross-continental drive demonstrates the performance of Skylark. (Image: Swift Navigation)

Swift’s first-of-its-kind, cross-continental drive demonstrates the performance of Skylark.

Swift Navigation, a San Francisco-based tech firm redefining GNSS and precise positioning technology for autonomous vehicles, has completed a cross-country drive test.

The goal of this first-of-its-kind drive, from San Francisco to New York and back, was to measure the efficacy of Swift’s recently expanded Skylark cloud corrections service and to demonstrate true nationwide lane-level GNSS correction coverage at the accuracy, reliability and availability levels required by Swift customers.

The drive took the Swift team across 26 states and Washington, D.C., with 6,614.7 miles (10,645.4 km) driven over 116 hours and 14 minutes logged. A Swift vehicle was equipped with 20 different GNSS devices, tested using six unique chipsets that included: Swift’s Piksi Multi, Duro and multiple leading GNSS silicon providers.

The results of the drive confirmed that Swift’s precise positioning solution — composed of Skylark and the Starling positioning engine — delivers consistent lane-level accuracy at continental level. Skylark delivered 100% availability, with sub-decimeter accuracy, over the entire United States, wherever cellular coverage was available.

Performance highlights from the drive:
- +Sub-meter horizontal accuracy (2-sigma) achieved across all environments
- 100% Skylark availability
- Highly repeatable results with Starling + Skylark across variety of dual-frequency GNSS chipsets
“This is the longest continuous GNSS-based precise positioning drive test of its kind and we are proud of the engineering team at Swift for undertaking this ambitious task,” said Anthony Cole, executive vice president of engineering. “The results show that Skylark performs as intended and expected in both open sky and urban environments and demonstrate that Skylark is truly a cross-continental corrections network delivering the high integrity and high availability required by automotive OEMs, last-mile applications, rail, mobile and micro-mobility companies.”

In addition to full contiguous U.S. (CONUS) coverage, the Skylark corrections service is now available in Europe and is being built out to support autonomous applications across the globe.

Download a complete write-up of the cross-country drive test at www.swiftnav.com.
June 9, 2020
Swift Navigation and Deutsche Telekom announce partnership

California-based Swift Navigation is partnering with Deutsche Telekom, an integrated telecommunications company based in Bonn, Germany. The partnership brings the precise positioning of Swift’s Skylark Cloud Corrections Services to Telekom’s comprehensive communications infrastructure via its new Precise Positioning product offering.

The Precise Positioning service is available across the United States and Germany, with expansion across Europe underway.

Autonomous applications. Autonomous applications, which rely on positioning accuracy, include self-driving cars, rail, autonomous robotic machine navigation, autonomous flight for unmanned aerial vehicles, last-mile delivery logistics, construction safety, and shared mobile positioning.

Swift and Telekom’s lane-level accurate Precise Positioning is specifically designed for level 2 and 3 automotive applications including advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), such as lane assist, highway autopilot, cellular vehicle-to-everything (CV2X) communications and lane level directions.

Standard GNSS positioning is accurate to three to five meters — unsuitable for autonomous systems. For higher levels of autonomous capability, high-precision localization is required to deliver accuracy down to the centimeter. This partnership brings the <10-centimeter accuracy of Swift’s precise positioning solution to Telekom customers.

Precise Positioning is a wide area, cloud-based GNSS corrections service that delivers real-time high-precision positioning to autonomous vehicles. Built from the ground up for autonomy at scale, the Precise Positioning service enables lane-level positioning, fast convergence times and high integrity and availability required by mass market automotive and autonomous applications.

Image: Swift

Hardware-Independent. The service is hardware-independent, allowing customers to choose their GNSS sensor ecosystem. It delivers a continuous stream of multi-constellation, multi-frequency GNSS corrections for a high-availability service that combines lane-level accuracy and world-class integrity at a continental scale.

“Swift Navigation is excited to continue our work with Telekom to bring Swift’s precise positioning GNSS expertise to Telekom’s broad customer base,” said Timothy Harris, co-founder and CEO at Swift Navigation. “This partnership is just the beginning of our joint service offering for autonomous vehicles across the EU.”

“Precise Positioning opens the doors to true autonomous mobility. Precise, safe and in the future also cross-national,” said Hagen Rickmann, responsible for business customers at Deutsche Telekom. “We are thus offering our customers an easy entry into the autonomous future. And we’re not just thinking of self-driving vehicles: The flexible offer is also suitable for use with drones and is even of interest to crane operators on construction sites.”

For ease in testing and integration, Swift and Telekom have created a Precise Positioning Evaluation Kit. The kit includes two workshops (onboarding and result review), testing hardware and software to connect to the Precise Positioning network for a three-month evaluation period and is available to purchase.

Image: Swift

March 2, 2020
HERE’s new HD GNSS enables sub-meter positioning for mass market

The company also announces that HERE Navigation On-Demand is OEM-ready with APCOA as partner

HERE Technologies has introduced at CES 2020 its High Definition Global Navigation Satellite System (HD GNSS) positioning, a cloud-based solution that enables mass-market devices to achieve sub-meter accuracy across the globe.

CES 2020, the massive annual consumer electronics show, is taking place Jan. 7-10 in Las Vegas. Here’s booth is at Central Plaza, Tech East.

HD GNSS enables new user experiences with lane-level navigation, augmented and virtual reality. It combines precise point positioning (PPP) and real-time kinematic (RTK) positioning methods, allowing for fast convergence time, high availability and global coverage.

It also supports off-the-shelf mobile devices and internet of things (IoT) trackers equipped with dual frequency chipsets such as the Broadcom BCM47765 and BCM47755.

Photo: HERE

More mass-market devices and vehicles are being equipped with dual-frequency GNSS receivers. With the HD GNSS service, the receivers enable high-precision positioning, HERE said, a capability that was cost and geographically prohibitive less than two years ago.

HERE HD GNSS accelerates chipset, hardware and software makers’ ability to offer a step change in what can be delivered to consumers in new product capabilities, features and user experiences, the company said.

HERE HD GNSS data delivery is optimized for mobile devices, requires no additional hardware and comes equipped with spoofing detection and phone sensor integration. It provides global coverage (including China and Japan), with single-frequency mobile device support in the future.

HERE is also working across a partner ecosystem — including reference station operators, chipset manufacturers, module makers, hardware vendors, mobile network operators and system integrators — to jointly improve the positioning accuracy to centimeter levels, and in more challenging environments such as urban canyons.

Automotive use cases

Autonomous driving. For safety, it’s critical that automated vehicles are designed with high levels of redundancy in positioning systems. If an automated vehicle gets caught in bad weather conditions which are degrading optical sensor operations, <0.2m positioning accuracy available via HD GNSS increases safety and operation time in autonomous mode.

Assisted driving. In case of an obstacle on the road, HD GNSS combined with HERE HD maps provide obstacle indication and avoidance functionality.

Mobile device use cases

Road lane guidance and improved ETAs on mobile devices. If a driver is unfamiliar with the roadway, HERE HD GNSS, combined with precision HERE map data, shows the driver the correct lane and path to navigate to the destination fast and safely.

Improved gaming and augmented reality experience. Location-based games are growing and widely popular, however they currently rely on less accurate positioning technologies that inhibit next generation use cases. HERE HD GNSS bring exciting opportunities to design the next version of games with sub-meter positional accuracy.

HERE Navigation On-Demand is OEM-ready with APCOA as partner

HERE Navigation On-Demand is now available for integration in OEM infotainment programs. APCOA Parking is the first non-automotive company to use the Service Package SDK to make its parking services available on HERE Navigation On-Demand.

HERE Technologies’ software-as-a-service solution HERE Navigation On-Demand is available for integration in OEM infotainment programs. With HERE Navigation On-Demand, OEMs and Tier 1 vendors get to deliver both connected services and expandable navigation experiences on both embedded and mobile platforms.

The connected solution cuts development and lifecycle costs by offering cutting-edge, off-the-shelf functionalities while enabling OEMs and Tier 1 vendors to use an SDK to build their own features or integrate third party services.

As a software-as-a-service offering, HERE Navigation On-Demand enables OEMs to remotely configure and monitor the deployed navigation solution making it possible to update and upgrade the experience anytime, even after the sale of the vehicle.

OEMs can further offer any functionality as a subscription option and thus generate new, recurring revenue streams. The end-user accesses the navigation experience through client software which downloads the Service Packages from the cloud.

The highly modular Service Packages include map data, software features, UX elements and references to Cloud Service APIs. Smart caching of these Service Packages ensures that HERE Navigation On-Demand also works offline.

Alexa, Amazon’s cloud-based voice service, is pre-integrated into HERE Navigation On-Demand, making it faster and easier for automakers to deliver an intuitive, voice-first navigation experience to customers in the car.

January 8, 2020
Swift Navigation expands Skylark precise positioning for autonomous vehicles

Image: Swift Navigation

Skylark is now available across the contiguous United States, enabling safe and lane-level accurate positioning.

Swift Navigation’s network-connected Skylark precise positioning service is now available throughout the United States. Full contiguous U.S. (CONUS) coverage reduces initialization times to seconds, ensuring high-accuracy, high-integrity positioning is available when customers need it.

Swift Navigation is a San Francisco-based tech firm providing centimeter-accurate GNSS positioning technology for autonomous vehicles, and the maker of the Piksi Multi and Duro GNSS receivers.

Skylark is built for autonomy at scale and delivers lane-level precision, with safety-of-life integrity, required by mass-market automotive and autonomous applications. Skylark is a scalable network delivering a continuous stream via the cloud of robust, reliable, multi-constellation, multi-frequency corrections, with the latency, security, precision and reliability required for safety and autonomy.

“Since Skylark was introduced last year, the Swift network team has been hard at work deploying infrastructure across the country,” said Rob Hranac, COO of Swift Navigation. “This extensive network helps remove hurdles in precise positioning for our customers and we look forward to partnering with those customers as we expand Skylark internationally.”

Skylark is designed to address the needs of automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) by supporting ASIL-rated (Automotive Safety Integrity Level) systems and Ntrip2 (Networked Transport of RTCM via Internet Protocol) connections in cloud reference station (CRS) mode. It is state space representation (SSR) ready — an emerging industry format.

Skylark is hardware-independent, giving customers a choice in today’s rapidly improving and commodifying the GNSS sensor ecosystem. OEMs are able to benefit from the lane-level positioning Skylark delivers using a host of third-party receivers in addition to Swift’s Piksi Multi and Duro receivers.

Unlike legacy real-time-kinematic (RTK) services designed for smaller regions and precise point positioning (PPP) services that suffer from slow convergence times, Skylark is a high-performance hybrid nationwide U.S. network that delivers initialization times in seconds, better than 10 centimeters of accuracy and integrity required by the most demanding safety-of-life critical applications.

When used with Swift’s Starling positioning engine, Skylark is capable of delivering protection levels (PL) down to 1 meter and target integrity risk (TIR) down to 10^-7/hour. Engineered for automotive functional safety standard ISO 26262 (ASIL B), Skylark is designed and built from the ground up to support next-generation GNSS applications, connected car, V2X and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS).

Skylark packages GNSS precise positioning as an affordable subscription service for ease in deployment for large-scale autonomous vehicle fleets.

July 31, 2019
Precise positioning drives lane-level accuracy in automotive industry

GNSS positioning algorithms combined with automotive-grade GNSS chipsets, inertial measurements and GNSS corrections services from a ground network of reference stations can deliver instant lane-level accuracy.

By Tasha Wong Ken and Sara Masterson, Hexagon Positioning Intelligence

Autonomous technology is reshaping the future of the automotive industry and Hexagon’s Positioning Intelligence Division (Hexagon PI) is developing cutting-edge positioning solutions to support the growth of this rapidly changing industry.

Hexagon PI is working with GNSS chipset manufacturers like STMicroelectronics to deliver automotive-grade, multi-frequency GNSS chipsets that combine our positioning algorithms with automotive-grade GNSS hardware to deliver solutions for connected cars, advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving applications.

In June, Hexagon PI introduced TerraStar X GNSS correction technology, which enables lane-level vehicle positioning in under a minute, using automotive-grade chipsets and the Hexagon PI positioning engine. Built on the company’s latest precise point positioning (PPP) algorithms, TerraStar X leverages existing Hexagon capabilities in ground network infrastructure, correction data generation, and data packaging for delivery.

FIGURE 1. TerraStar X correction data generation and delivery to the vehicle. (Image: Hexagon PI)

By combining Hexagon PI’s software positioning engine with GNSS measurements from automotive-grade chipsets and inertial measurement unit (IMU) data, TerraStar X GNSS correction services can deliver instant lane-level accuracy positioning.

TerraStar X combines existing TerraStar global clock and orbit data with regional ionospheric correction data from Hexagon’s vast network of SmartNet reference stations. This forms the technology foundation for future correction services on connected cars, ADAS and autonomous driving markets, including integrity and authentication for safety-critical applications.

FIGURE 2. The Hexagon PI positioning engine achieves seamless position accuracy by taking GNSS measurements from the Teseo V GNSS receiver, combining it with their positioning algorithms, GNSS+INS coupling, and TerraStar X correction technology. (Image: Hexagon PI)

TABLE 1. Cumulative distribution of horizontal errors from testing on German roads. (Table: T. W. Ken and S. Masterson)

HxGN SmartNet consists of a large operational reference station network, consisting of more than 4,500 stations with continuous quality monitoring and support. Correction data generation takes place at Hexagon processing centers where service reliability, redundancy and 99.999% guaranteed service uptime ensure corrections are available for users 24/7/365.

While TerraStar X utilizes the stations already available, the algorithms are flexible and will accommodate the rollout of new service areas with increased station separation, enabling continental-scale coverage.

TerraStar X technology will deliver correction data to vehicles and end users through hybrid delivery channels, including both cellular network and satellite. Combining TerraStar X technology with multiple delivery channels ensures that vehicles, UAVs, industrial vehicles, trains, and more will operate safely, securely, reliably, and efficiently.

TerraStar X testbeds are being utilized for several advanced automotive development programs in North America and Europe, TerraStar X commercial services will be available in 2019. Interested customers can request access to any of the testbeds through Hexagon PI.

Positioning Engine. Hexagon PI’s positioning engine architecture enables a flexible integration with different GNSS receiver chipsets, augmentation sensors and processor environments, providing automotive manufacturers with additional flexibility when it comes to sourcing components and subsystems of ADAS and autonomous driving solutions.

The positioning engine is being developed to Automotive Safety Integrity Level (ASIL)-B standards and will include a proprietary GNSS integrity solution to ensure safe positioning within defined protection limits tailored to the customer’s application requirements.

Recent test results

Hexagon PI conducted demonstrations in Michigan and Germany using an automotive platform that combined automotive-grade GNSS hardware with TerraStar X technology and the software positioning engine to demonstrate instant lane-level accuracy with correction data delivered over the cellular network to test vehicles.

The results are from the most recent demonstration performed in urban conditions in Germany. The route consisted of a mix of controlled-access highway and light urban roads in the city. In this case, the positioning engine using TerraStar X and GNSS+INS coupling deliver 1-meter accuracy through 95% of the dataset.

FIGURE 3. Cumulative distribution of horizontal errors from tests on German roads. (Figure: T. W. Ken and S. Masterson)

Throughout the data collection, position accuracy improves by almost 70% when TerraStar X and the positioning engine is used. In some areas, it was found that the position solution can improve up to 95% with the Hexagon PI positioning solution over the standalone Teseo V, an automotive-grade GNSS receiver from STMicroelectronics.

FIGURE 4. Horizontal position errors from testing on German roads. (Figure: T. W. Ken and S. Masterson)

Looking ahead in automotive

Hexagon PI continues to demonstrate the benefits of precise positioning on automotive-grade chipsets using augmentation sensors, our positioning engine, and TerraStar X technology in a variety of environments worldwide. Our goal is to develop a solution for mass-production that provides accurate and functionally safe positioning to enable the advancement of autonomy in the automotive industry.

August 2, 2018
Hexagon Positioning demonstrates lane-level accuracy with Ligado Networks

Hexagon’s Positioning Intelligence division has successfully deployed TerraStar X GNSS correction technology, which enables instant lane-level accuracy for autonomous automotive planning programs, the company said.

“In partnership with Ligado Networks, we have demonstrated delivery of TerraStar X technology over both satellite and cellular networks to position vehicles with 5-centimeter (2-inch) accuracy in under a minute,” Hexagon stated in a press release. “Combining TerraStar X technology with multiple delivery channels is a significant step towards the future of Autonomous X, where cars, UAVs, industrial vehicles, trains and more will operate safely, securely, reliably and efficiently.

TerraStar X technology is built on the latest precise point positioning algorithms. According to the company, it leverages existing Hexagon capabilities in ground network infrastructure, correction data generation and data packaging for delivery.

By eliminating convergence time while providing high-accuracy global positioning, TerraStar X will form the future of Hexagon’s correction services for safety-of-life applications and Autonomous X.

When combined with automotive-grade GNSS receivers available through Hexagon Positioning Intelligence, the technology allows automotive customers to evaluate positioning performance in real time using data delivered over the cellular network or the L-band frequency using Ligado’s SkyTerra satellite in North America.

Trial networks for customer evaluation are available in California, Arizona and Michigan over satellite or cellular network, and in Germany using cellular delivery. The infrastructure is scalable, enabling timely geographic expansion to accommodate automotive development programs globally.

Commercial solutions designed for the automotive market will be available in 2019.

“Ligado’s expertise in satellite delivery and proactive involvement in this project enabled rapid deployment of our TerraStar X correction technology over the test area,” said Sara Masterson, positioning services segment manager with Hexagon’s Positioning Intelligence division. “Their unique spot-beam technology enables efficient delivery of the higher bandwidth correction data required for this application and adds a delivery method providing continental scale coverage.”

The geostationary Skyterra satellite operated by Ligado uses a 22-meter reflector-based antenna to deliver an L-band signal over North America. Several of the L-band DGPS/PPP service providers, including Terrastar, have used the Skyterra-1 satellite since its 2010 launch to support North American coverage.

Hexagon has been providing highly reliable, precise GNSS corrections under VERIPOS, TerraStar, Oceanix, and SmartNet brands for more than 20 years, the company said. It operates the world’s largest reference station network, consisting of more than 4,500 stations.

“Hexagon is uniquely positioned to offer end to end solutions from correction data generation through to GNSS positioning solutions in the vehicle,” said Brian Deobald, vice president, strategic product and ecosystem development, Ligado Networks. “We are excited to partner with Hexagon on this opportunity to demonstrate the delivery of TerraStar X technology, using high throughput, cost-efficient satellite connectivity to enable superior performance and reliability for autonomous driving applications.”

Ligado. This development has no relationship to the current Ligado Networks petition before the Federal Communications Commission to repurpose some of its mobile satellite systems spectrum to broadcast from ground-based transmitters. That matter is still pending, and there is currently no such signal being broadcast.

Featured Image: Hexagon

June 15, 2018