Tag: Nestwave

Geolocation companies consolidate as NextNav acquires Nestwave

NextNav Inc., a GPS and 3D geolocation company, has acquired Nestwave SAS, a privately held company specializing in low-power geolocation.

The acquisition was completed Oct. 31 for $18 million.

NextNav is based in McLean, Virginia, and Nestwave is located in based in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. Nestwave provides advanced geolocation solutions to internet of things (I0T) modem and digital signal processor vendors and end IoT users.

Nestwave will adopt NextNav’s name and be integrated into existing TerraPoiNT engineering and technology efforts, with all Nestwave employees remaining with the company. Nestwave CEO Ambroise Popper will become NextNav’s vice president and general manager in France and is joining NextNav’s executive leadership team, while Nestwave CTO and Founder Rabih Chrabieh will serve as vice president of engineering.

The combination of NextNav’s technology with Nestwave’s LTE/5G capabilities will allow NextNav to intelligently combine signals from existing terrestrial LTE/5G networks with its own highly synchronized TerraPoiNT system to deliver near nationwide resilient 3D position, navigation and timing (PNT) capabilities that contribute to dramatically lower deployment costs.

The company serves markets including timing for critical infrastructure, aviation, automotive, IoT and other mass market applications sooner.

“The acquisition of Nestwave presents a unique opportunity for NextNav to optimize further the use of its existing spectrum bandwidth, while contributing to a drastic decrease of our TerraPoiNT system’s future capital and operating expenditures,” said Ganesh Pattabiraman, NextNav co-founder and CEO.

“By leveraging Nestwave’s unique technology and ambient LTE/5G waveform, NextNav can gain significant spectral efficiency, accelerate the availability of resilient PNT and release the underlying spectrum’s capacity for additional data-oriented services. An LTE/5G waveform also enables broader penetration of NextNav’s applications and technology across the handset and device ecosystem for all of its products and target markets,” Pattabiraman said.

Pattabiraman continued, “Nestwave brings not only a physical presence in Europe, but also a team of professionals who have established strong relationships with European Union representatives that will be beneficial as we continue active conversations with government officials in the United States, Europe and globally over GPS/GNSS resilience.

“The transaction is not expected to materially increase the company’s operational cash burn, and the lowered capital requirements will enable us to quickly scale our GPS resiliency capabilities in both the United States and global markets sooner than previously anticipated.”

NextNav posted a pre-recorded conference call to discuss the acquisition.

November 3, 2022
Nestwave white paper considers power consumption for IoT devices
Nestwave has released a white paper that considers the challenges associated with integrating accurate geolocation into compact, battery-powered, low-cost internet of things (IoT) nodes.

The technical paper “Minimizing Power Budgets to Enable Geolocation on Every IoT Device” is targeted at engineers and developers looking to add accurate positioning functionality to IoT technologies where power requirements must be kept to an absolute minimum.

Topics covered include:
- why conventional tracking architectures are not suitable for many IoT implementations
- the importance of factors such as time-to-first-fix (TTFF)
- the number of fixes and levels of integration in determining power consumption.
The paper introduces new ways of handling positioning signal acquisition, ranging and tracking, and proposes solutions that eliminate the need for a separate GNSS-integrated circuit and that offload energy-intensive computation to the cloud.

“Tracking will be an important element in the evolution of the IoT, which means making accurate geolocation viable for every single IoT node is absolutely critical,” said Ambroise Popper, Nestwave CEO. “This paper explains why traditional solutions are too power-hungry, too large and too expensive to meet the energy, form factor and cost constraints of most IoT devices and introduces solutions for addressing the challenge.”
June 4, 2022
Nestwave geolocation added to Sequans IoT platform

Nestwave is collaborating with Sequans to deliver accurate and efficient GNSS positioning for low-power internet of things tracking

The Nestwave IP provides the latest Sequans LTE-M/NB-IoT platform with geolocation. (Photo: Sequans)

Nestwave has announced that its technology has been selected by Sequans Communications S.A., provider of 5G/4G cellular internet of things (IoT) connectivity solutions. Specifically, Nestwave’s technology will add GNSS positioning to the Sequans Monarch 2 LTE-M/NB-IoT platform.

Integrated into the Sequans Monarch 2 GM02SP module, the Nestwave GNSS solution offers Sequans’ IoT customers accurate positioning with ultra-low-power consumption while minimizing component count, cost and size by removing the need for an external positioning chipset.

This makes the Sequans platform suitable for a wide variety of intermittent, power-limited tracking use cases including personal trackers, parcel and pallet location, and fleet trackers, as well as car, bike and scooter location and theft recovery. Cosmo Connected, a leader in urban mobility solutions, has already adopted the Monarch 2 GM02SP solution to reduce the cost and power consumption of its tracker products.

Nestwave’s technology allows geolocation to be added to existing IoT chipsets by implementing a GNSS receiver using the chip’s existing radio and computing capabilities. This eliminates the need for an external GNSS chipset and product redesign.

“Nestwave’s technology provides the smallest, most power efficient, and lowest component count solutions for IoT geolocation,” said Nestwave CEO Ambroise Popper. “Our strategic partnership with Sequans addresses the challenge of integrating accurate geolocation into compact, often battery-powered, low-cost IoT nodes and allows Sequans customers to benefit from higher performing, lower cost tracking solutions.”

“Leveraging Nestwave’s innovative technology to provide low-power GNSS on Monarch 2 widens its capabilities and makes many types of IoT tracker use cases more affordable because there is no need for additional positioning chips or modules,” said Georges Karam, Sequans CEO.

Nestwave IP has been integrated into a variety of chip architectures and on various DSP/CPU cores. In combination with Nestwave cloud services, this IP enables a very short time-to-first-fix, which allows for much lower power consumption in tracking use cases, without compromising on sensitivity or accuracy. The company’s technology roadmap includes the addition of 5G/4G cellular-based hybrid location functionality and solutions that will improve the accuracy of indoor tracking.

December 14, 2021
Collaboration aimed at GNSS solution for IoT modems

Synopsys Inc. and Nestwave are collaborating to combine Nestwave’s geolocation software with the Synopsys DesignWare ARC IoT Communications Subsystem for a complete low-power GNSS solution for integration into IoT modems.

The collaboration will provide designers with a power-efficient, high-accuracy GPS solution for battery-operated devices without the additional cost of a dedicated GNSS chip.

The joint solution will be presented at the Synopsys ARC Processor Virtual Summit on Wednesday, Sept. 9.

“Today’s advanced navigation systems are facing unique challenges when being implemented in power-constrained IoT devices,” said Ambroise Popper, CEO at Nestwave. “By combining Nestwave’s low-power geolocation software with Synopsys’ efficient ARC IoT Communications IP Subsystem, we can deliver a geolocation solution that offers greater accuracy, lower power consumption, and lower cost compared to existing GNSS solutions.”

Ultra-low bandwith IoT applications

The ARC IoT Communications IP Subsystem is an integrated hardware and software solution that combines Synopsys’ DSP-enhanced ARC EM9D processor, hardware accelerators, dedicated peripherals and RF interface to deliver efficient DSP performance for ultra-low bandwidth IoT applications.

Nestwave’s GNSS solution takes advantage of the ARC EM9D processor’s efficient DSP capabilities and ability to add dedicated hardware accelerators or custom instructions using APEX technology to reduce frequency requirements, giving customers additional performance bandwidth.

The ARC EM9D processor is supported by the MetaWare Toolkit, which includes a rich library of DSP functions, allowing software engineers to rapidly implement algorithms from standard DSP building blocks.

Geolocation for emerging applications

Nestwave has developed an ultra-low power, advanced GNSS solution for use in IoT applications. When integrated with an IoT modem such as NB-IoT, Cat M1, LoRa or Sigfox, the solution offers low-cost geolocation for emerging applications such as asset tracking, smart factories, and smart cities, without the need for an external GNSS chip.

“Emerging IoT applications are demanding geolocation functionality with high-accuracy and ultra-low power consumption,” said John Koeter, senior vice president of marketing and strategy for IP at Synopsys. “The combination of Synopsys’ ARC IoT Communications IP Subsystem with Nestwave’s GNSS technology will help designers significantly improve geolocation performance, reduce frequency requirements and lower overall power consumption for battery-powered IoT applications.”

Feature image: metamorworks/iStock/Getty Images Plus/Getty Images

September 3, 2020
Nestwave demos low-power GPS for IoT at Mobile World Congress

Image: iStock.com/metamorworks via Bentley Systems

Nestwave has developed an ultra-low power, advanced GNSS solution for use in internet of things (IoT) applications.

Nestwave, a Paris-based startup, is demonstrating its new low-power, high-accuracy GPS IP at Mobile World Congress, being held Feb. 25-28 in Barcelona, Spain.

The software-based GNSS solution allows modem customers to add accurate position-based services to their modem platforms.

When integrated with an IoT modem such as NB-IoT, Cat M1, LoRa or Sigfox, the solution offers low-cost geolocation for emerging applications such as asset tracking, smart factories and smart cities, without the need for an external GNSS chip.

“After several years of development and based on a number of key signal processing breakthroughs, we believe Nestwave is well-positioned to provide a best-in-class solution for low-power IoT applications where position awareness is key,” said Rabih Chrabieh, Nestwave CEO. “We are excited to demonstrate our GPS solution, in collaboration with Cadence by leveraging their Tensilica Fusion F1 DSP platform at MWC this year.”

“The Fusion F1 DSP is gaining traction with customers as a platform for low-cost, power-sensitive IoT communications standards like NB-IoT,” said Gerard Andrews, director of marketing for Tensilica products at Cadence.

The Cadence Tensilica Fusion F1 DSP is designed for low-cost IoT applications requiring a single processor core that is proficient at both DSP and control-code workloads.

Developed on a highly configurable architecture, the Fusion F1 DSP is specifically designed to excel at “always-on” processing, including wake-on-voice and sensor fusion applications.

Additionally, the Fusion F1 DSP instruction-set architecture is very efficient at running narrowband wireless communications standards like BLE, Thread, Zigbee, 802.11ah, NB-IoT and GNSS.

Visit the Nestwave/Cadence demo at the Cadence booth at Fira Gran Via, hall 6, stand 6L34.

February 25, 2019