GPS World

Tag: E911

  • Spirent Enhances Location Availability for VoLTE E911 Calls Indoors

    Spirent Enhances Location Availability for VoLTE E911 Calls Indoors

    Spirent Communications has announced major enhancements that will help improve location accuracy for E911 calls indoors. The additional test capabilities on Spirent’s 8100 Location Technology Solution (LTS) enable operators to deliver optimal location performance to support VoLTE E911 calling and to understand how LTE positioning technologies such as OTDOA can help meet the recently proposed Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations for E911 indoors.

    OTDOA accuracy is 50 to 200 meters.

    LTE brings a promise of improved location accuracy with new positioning technologies and their integration using hybrid techniques. Although established technologies such as A-GNSS (A-GPS and A-GLONASS) provides excellent performance in environments with a clear view of the sky, performance is often poor indoors, where detection of satellite signals is limited. In LTE, current standards support Observed Time Difference of Arrival (OTDOA), an advanced cellular positioning technology that can augment A-GNSS and provide a more accurate location fix for indoor scenarios.

    With large-scale VoLTE rollouts imminent, leading operators are confronted with the need for extensive and complex testing of LTE positioning technologies to ensure VoLTE E911 works well from day one. Additionally, the FCC, whose current E911 regulations apply only to outdoor environments, has proposed stringent indoor requirements as a response to increased mobile usage for emergency calls and lack of accurate positioning information on calls that originate indoors.

    “Roughly 70 percent of 911 calls are placed from wireless phones and a majority of these calls originate indoors, so there is a real urgency in providing better location accuracy for mobile users, wherever they are calling from,” said Nigel Wright, vice president at Spirent Communications. “Spirent is currently working with all the key industry players to evaluate OTDOA and its integration with other positioning technologies, and to enable operators to meet the location requirements for VoLTE E911 and the evolving FCC requirements.”

    Spirent 8100 LTS has won widespread acceptance as the leading platform for location testing in the wireless industry, and with this latest capability is now able to support OTDOA Position Calculation Function (PCF). Minimum performance testing for OTDOA looks only at the raw measurements from the device, whereas use of OTDOA PCF enables full verification of a device’s position accuracy performance. Recognizing its importance, leading carriers have established their own OTDOA positioning performance requirements beyond bare minimum standards. Ensuring that devices fully meet these requirements as well as the evolving FCC regulations for E911 requires comprehensive testing.

  • GigOptix Offers GNSS RF Receiver with Dual-Mode, High Linearity, Low Power

    The GigOptix EXG0201
    The GigOptix EXG0201

    GigOptix, Inc., is making available samples of its newest GNSS RF receiver for road, maritime, agriculture and surveying applications.

    GigOptrix is a supplier of advanced high speed semiconductor components for use in long-haul, metro, cloud connectivity, data centers, consumer electronics links and interactive applications, through optical and wireless communications networks.

    The new EXG0201 device is expected to be one of several RF-focused products the company will bring to market over the next few quarters stemming from the recently acquired Tahoe RF Semiconductor, now called the GigOptix-Auburn RF Design Center after its integration into GigOptix earlier this month.

    The new EXG0201 product marks the introduction of GNSS RF receivers by GigOptix. It is a low-power consumption, highly linear RF GNSS receiver in a small Quad Flat No-Lead (QFN) package. The fully integrated device is optimized for industrial applications and has dual channels supporting both the upper and lower GNSS bands.

    The EXG0201 provides two modes of operation, a high-resolution mode and a low-resolution, low-power mode. It integrates RF signal processing, 12 or 3-bit analog to digital convertors, dual fractional-N synthesizers (with a shared reference to generate RF LO signals) and a three-wire SPI digital interface to provide the necessary functionality required to create a high-end GNSS receiver system. All of the EXG0201 sub-systems are programmable through the use of the on-chip SPI interface.

    The GNSS industrial market, supporting road, maritime, agriculture, and surveying applications, is expected to grow to 67% in annual shipments to 43 million devices. The road segment dominates the annual quantity consuming about 98% of the total shipments. The road segment’s growth is driven by increased regulatory pressure for E911 emergency location calls.

    “The EXG0201 represents our introduction of fully integrated RF-to-bits devices into a growing GNSS market, and serves as a proof point to the strategic importance of the Tahoe RF acquisition. The newly acquired IP and product capabilities put us in an excellent position to provide differentiated solutions and increased business over the long-term,” said Irshad Rasheed, director of marketing for wireless and RF products at GigOptix. “From a capabilities standpoint, the EXG0201 provides excellent performance with 28 MHz of signal bandwidth, dual-channel operation, 60 dB of instantaneous dynamic range, and 75 dB of gain, all contained within a small 72-pin QFN package.”

    The EXG0201 is expected to ship in full production quantities starting in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2014.

  • Tests Show Existing Tech Can Meet Proposed FCC Indoor 911 Accuracy

    fcc-logo_TAn independent study of indoor tests of a hybrid wireless location technology was submitted today to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) by wireless location engineering firm TechnoCom. The study demonstrates that existing technologies can satisfy location requirements within the timeframe proposed by the FCC in its draft rule on indoor 911 accuracy for wireless calls, according to True Position, which commissioned TechnoCom to perform the testing.

    Multiple wireless carriers have challenged the technical feasibility of the proposed rule, claiming that existing technologies cannot satisfy the proposed accuracy requirements, with a spokesperson for the industry trade association claiming the rule represented “aspirational target setting.”

    The results filed today by TechnoCom disprove those assertions, showing that viable technology exists in the market today, True Position said.  According to TechnoCom’s findings, “The outcome is a current overall performance that readily meets the FCC’s proposed location performance threshold for indoor wireless E911 at the 67th percentile.  The demonstrated performance even comes very close to meeting the 50 meter threshold at 80%, which is intended for 5 years from adoption of the proposed rules.”

    Multiple other vendors have submitted filings to the FCC claiming that their technologies would also satisfy the requirements of the rule on the timeline proposed by the FCC.

    “These results should prove helpful to the FCC as it moves toward reaching a resolution on its proposed rule on indoor location requirements,” said Craig Waggy, CEO of True Position.  “We know that accurate location information is vitally important to American consumers, and that the FCC is intent on remedying the lack of wireless indoor location requirements for calls placed to 911 from wireless devices.”

    The tests were conducted using True Position’s commercially available Uplink Time Difference of Arrival (UTDOA) technology standalone, and a hybrid solution consisting of Assisted GPS (A-GPS) and UTDOA technologies, and included indoor testing in both urban and suburban environments in Wilmington, Delaware, and surrounding areas.

    For the testing, buildings of varying sizes, construction materials and use were selected by the independent firm, and a total of 62 test points were selected among 16 buildings. In all cases, the test buildings and test points remained anonymous to True Position until the conclusion of the testing and delivery of all results to the independent firm.

    In early 2013, TechnoCom conducted the indoor accuracy testing for the FCC’s Communications, Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council (CSRIC).  The same location and measurement methodologies were used in these tests.

    The FCC has estimated that 10,000 lives could be saved each year if calls made to 911 from wireless phones had accurate location information.

  • Association Says Indoor Location Technology Not Ready

    Association Says Indoor Location Technology Not Ready

    Kevin Dennehy
    Kevin Dennehy

    Not everyone is talking up the accuracy of indoor positioning. Arlington, Virginia-based Telecommunications Industry Association says the technology, which is seen as the one way location-based services providers will be able to capture consumer interest, is not ready. In other LBS news, AT&T has come out with data pricing for its connected vehicle initiatives.

    In a recent FCC filing, the Telecommunications Industry Association said that indoor positioning technology is not sufficiently developed to support ongoing wireless E-911 location accuracy requirements.

    While TIA supports the FCC’s goal to improve location accuracy, “Imposing location accuracy mandates at this time would be premature, given the nascent stage of the technology that will be needed to accomplish the Commission’s objectives, and should neither favor nor disfavor specific technologies,” said the association in its filing.

    The NPRM proposes a requirement to achieve “rough” indoor location information, TIA said. It proposes to require providers to provide horizontal information for wireless 911 calls that originate indoors, specifically a caller’s location within 50 meters.

    TIA also disagrees with an FCC proposal to require mobile operators to provide z-axis, which is vertical location within 3 meters of a caller’s location, for 67 percent and 80 percent of indoor wireless 911 calls — ranging from three to five years after adoption. Again, TIA says that the technology is not fully developed.

    TIA quoted AT&T’s filing: “[The] time [is] right to begin discussing Indoor Location Accuracy for E-911” but the “FCC should be careful to ensure that any proposed rules on location accuracy are aligned with proven capabilities of the current state of technology and they should set realistic accuracy benchmarks that the industry and public safety can embrace.”

    The location industry has been counting on indoor positioning, with its beacons and Wi-Fi enhancements, to jump-start a location-based services market that always seems to have tremendous potential, but the numbers don’t back it up. Some big-time analysts have said that while the promise of indoor positioning is huge, it just isn’t there technically yet.

    In fact, one analyst said that the biggest technological breakthrough last year was indoor mapping. Such major retailers as Home Depot and Lowes launched indoor maps with product search locators. These same analysts say that indoor Wi-Fi positioning is not accurate enough for macro location.

    The big deal coming up is how FCC positioning accuracy regulations will affect beacons or Bluetooth low energy for micro location and proximity services.

    TIA said it supports initial FCC location accuracy requirements back to 2007. However, don’t ask TIA for more location regulation. “To date, the development of 911 and E911 location accuracy technologies and applications has been fostered by a voluntary and consensus-based standards process. This process has proven quite successful to date, and the Commission should refrain from imposing regulations that could slow additional development,” the association said.

    AT&T Announces Connected Car Pricing

    AT&T Mobility said standalone pricing for new LTE-enabled OnStar service will be $5 or $10 per month, depending on whether the driver is an OnStar subscriber. The company said it will allow customers, with a GM LTE-capable vehicle, to add the car as another device for $10 — which is the same price as a tablet.

    OnStar subscribers will get coverage ranging from $5 for 200 MB of data per month to $50 for 5 GB. GM is also allowing customers to buy one-time data packages.

    At this year’s CES, General Motors announced its first LTE-enabled vehicles — in which AT&T Mobility is powering the LTE network for GM’s OnStar service. The first LTE-enabled vehicles, which will be available this summer, are Impala, Spark, Volt, Orlando, Spark RV, Silverado, Silverado HD, Malibu, Equinox and Corvette Stingray. GM plans to have 30 Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac vehicles LTE-equipped by the end of the year.

    AT&T also made recent deals to provide connectivity for Ericsson Connected Vehicle Cloud which connects to the AT&T Drive platform for automakers.

    CEA Hosts CES on the Hill

    Members of Congress and their staff had the opportunity to observe location technology during the Consumer Electronics Association’s recent CES on the Hill event in Washington. Exhibiting companies include Origo Safe, distracted driving; AT&T Drive; DashIt; Qualcomm, which showed off a geofencing product around schools; and RideScout.

    Washington-based Ridescout is a cool, and free, mobile app that allows a user to find the nearest subway, bus, taxi, bikeshare, sedan service, carshare, pedi-cab or carpool. A user can choose from a list of options by proximity, cost or arrival time.

    “We launched in November in Washington, D.C. We are in Austin, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago and planning several new markets,” said Steve Carroll, Ridescout vice president of operations.

    The app, which is on the iOS and Android platforms, generates revenue by sharing with the ride providers, large organizations and universities and the public transport network, Carroll said.

    Some of Ridescout’s partners include Mozio, RidePost, Metro of Washington, Bandwagon, Sidecar, Car2Go, Arlington Transit, Capital Bikeshare, Yellow Cab, DC Circulator and Dash.

    RideScout, founded by two Army veterans, was hatched when founder and CEO Joseph Kopser wanted an application to show him the best way to get to work in the Washington area. He could not find one and started the company with Craig Cummings. The company initially launched an alpha product at South by Southwest in 2013.

    Though it was the first to combine all modes of transportation in a single application, the company has some competition. Of course this competition is from the 800-pound location gorilla, Google.

    Google, with its Google Maps platform, shows the directions to the nearest transportation mode. Now it is incorporating Uber, which is an on-demand transportation provider.

    This is not the first time Google has launched a product in an effort to dominate a market place or niche. When it launched Google Maps in 2009, it put the hurt on many companies in the location industry, which underwent a three-year period of consolidation, company closings and layoffs.

  • FCC Ready for Indoor Location Rules for 911 Calls

    FCC Ready for Indoor Location Rules for 911 Calls

    Janice Partyka
    Janice Partyka

    Last week, the FCC proposed to update 911 regulations to require carriers to be able to locate 911 calls that are made indoors. The current rules were made in 1996 and only required carriers to locate outdoor calls. Then, the outdoor-only rule made sense. We used wireline indoors, and complex indoor technology wasn’t in sight. That is no longer the case. Nearly 73 percent of 911 calls in California are made from wireless phones. The FCC wants to start small; in the near term, wireless carriers would need to identify the building, as well as the floor, from where the call is being made. I’ll get to the proposed long-term rules in a bit.

    How do I think this will play out? Dialing back in time to the turn of the century, you will recall that the carriers were stomping their feet in outrage over FCC rules that required carriers to send the location of an outdoor 911 call to dispatch centers. The word onerous was used generously by the carriers. K Street filled its pockets lobbying the FCC to water down location accuracy requirements and reporting. There were certainly some challenges complying with the FCC rules, but they were greatly overstated.

    Back then, I served two terms on the board of the E911 Institute, which supported a caucus in Congress devoted to promoting emergency response. The board included wireless carriers, vendors and public safety professionals. While, on the face of it the carriers were providing support for E911, at the same time, they were working hard to take teeth out of the implementation. We will see how the carriers respond this time.

    So let’s look at the FCC’s proposed rules for the long-term. The commission is proposing more detailed indoor location accuracy standards that would require identification of the specific room, office or apartment where a wireless 911 call is made. Imagine a call being placed from a college dorm or arena and the value is clear. And with regard to the technology, my retailer in the mall can trace my location throughout the mall, before and after I enter their store. As usual, the commercial arena has showed us what’s possible. Let’s see what the carriers say this time about stricter rules on location.

  • Rx Networks Launches BeiDou Services

    Rx Networks, Inc., a mobile location technology and services company, has completed the upgrade of its GPStream Global Reference Network (GRN) to include the BeiDou constellation. A top-tier GNSS semiconductor vendor has already incorporated this new feature so its platform can take advantage of the extra satellites now available in the BeiDou constellation, the company said.

    Global real-time assistance and high-accuracy long-term orbit and clock prediction products are now uniformly available across the GPS, GLONASS and BeiDou constellations. In the second quarter of 2014, BeiDou support will also extend to GPStream PGPS — Rx Networks’ popular synthetic A-GNSS software that has been deployed in more than 100 million smartphones and personal navigation devices worldwide.

    In commercial service since 2006, the GPStream GRN is a collection of 26 highly reliable earth stations deployed in 21 countries. It forms the foundation underneath many of Rx Networks’ products, on which nearly a billion devices rely for their GNSS performance. The network is highly redundant and, combined with a carrier-grade service delivery network, is provided with a 99.999 percent service-level availability (SLA). A further upgrade, to support the European-run Galileo constellation, will be available later this year.

    From network operators’ commercial and E911 location servers to GNSS chipset vendors and device OEMs, the addition of BeiDou means faster and higher availability GNSS location fixes.

    “The addition of BeiDou to our existing GPStream GRN service meant a complete overhaul of our reference network and service delivery architecture while maintaining the 99.999 percent SLA we’re well known for,” commented Guylain Roy-MacHabee, CEO of Rx Networks. “As multi-GNSS chipsets come to market, there is commensurate requirement for a uniform, reliable and device-independent assistance data service like our GPStream GRN.”

  • FCC Acts to Help Emergency Responders Locate Wireless 911 Callers Indoors

    WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Federal Communications Commission today proposed rules to help emergency responders better locate wireless callers to 911. The proposed updates to the FCC’s Enhanced 911 (E911) rules respond to Americans’ increasing use of wireless phones to call 911, especially from indoors, and take advantage of technological developments that allow for more accurate location information to be transmitted with 911 calls.

    The FCC’s current E911 rules require wireless providers to automatically transmit information to 911 call centers on the location of wireless 911 callers within certain parameters for accuracy. These rules, which were adopted in 1996 and underwent their last major revision in 2010, enable wireless providers to meet this accuracy standard based solely on the performance of outdoor wireless 911 calls.

    However, many Americans are replacing landlines with wireless phones, and calling patterns are changing. For example, reports indicate that nearly 73 percent of 911 calls in California are made from wireless phones, and approximately 80 percent of all smartphone use occurs indoors.

    In light of these trends, the FCC today proposed changes to its E911 rules to include indoor location accuracy — particularly location accuracy in challenging indoor environments such as large multi-story buildings, where first responders are often unable to determine the floor or even the building where the 911 call originated. Determining the location of indoor wireless callers is more challenging than determining an outdoor location, but innovation and technological developments in this area are making it easier to locate mobile devices wherever they are, the FCC said.

    The FCC proposes in the near term that wireless providers meet interim location accuracy metrics that would be sufficient to identify the building for most indoor calls. The FCC also proposes that wireless providers deliver vertical location information that would enable first responders to identify the floor level for most calls from multi-story buildings.

    In the long term, the FCC seeks to develop more granular indoor location accuracy standards that would require identification of the specific room, office, or apartment where a wireless 911 call is made, according to the statement by the FCC. These standards would rely on the advancing capabilities of indoor location technology and increasing deployment of in-building communications infrastructure.

    The FCC also proposed additional steps to strengthen its existing E911 rules to ensure delivery of more timely, accurate, and actionable location information for all wireless 911 calls. In addition, the FCC is seeking comment on whether to revisit its timeframe for replacing its current handset- and network-based location accuracy standards with a single standard in light of technological developments.
    While seeking comment on its proposals, the FCC also encouraged industry, the public safety community, and other stakeholders to work collaboratively to develop alternate proposals for its consideration. The FCC emphasized that its ultimate objective is that all Americans – whether they are calling from urban or rural areas, from indoors or outdoors – receive the support they need in times of emergency.

  • NextNav and Broadcom Partner for Indoor Accuracy

    NextNav and Broadcom Partner for Indoor Accuracy

    A NextNav beacon.
    A NextNav beacon.

    On October 2, NextNav announced that Broadcom Corporation acquired a commercial license to NextNav’s Metropolitan Beacon System (MBS) technology, a so-called terrestrial constellation that brings GNSS-like performance to indoor and urban environments where satellite-based positioning is either unavailable or significantly degraded.

    The agreement enables Broadcom to integrate NextNav’s location technology into its mass-market GNSS connectivity and mobility platforms, used primarily in cell phones and tablets.

    NextNav President and Founder Ganesh Pattabiraman characterized the deal in a conversation with GPS World:  “This is a commercial license to a Tier 1 chipset provider, whose products are in a vast number of smart and feature phones in the country. The partnership enables our technology in a low-cost, high-volume form factor. This is important for us since we don’t make chips. We rely on partners such as Broadcom.  This is the first of many such agreements; we’ll have more through the year.”

    Most wireless companies have a mobility group addressing cellular modems, the central clearinghouse for so-called connectivity: the combination of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GNSS, and other technologies. Standard assisted GNSS (A-GNSS) packages to date in such cases generally consist of  ephemeris from all GNSS satellite constellations supported by the wireless company’s chips, cell ID and Wi-Fi ID from base-station databases, and additional proprietary assistance mechanisms.

    The NextNav MBS concept shares many operating principles with GNSS satellite constellations, but because the NextNav beacons are installed terrestrially instead of in space, they transmit sufficient signal strength for reliable reception indoors and in urban canyons where a clear view of the sky is unavailable. MBS is deployed much like a cellular network, to provide consistent indoor positioning to every building within a covered metropolitan area. MBS offers both accurate horizontal positioning and highly accurate altitude information, a particularly important capability for emergency responders in urban and indoor areas where GNSS systems tend to be most challenged.

    NextNav built its MBS network across forty large U.S. markets (see list at end of story) with its own Federal Communications Commission (FCC) licensed spectrum. “We bring more a managed network providing consistency and reliability of position information,” continued Pattabiraman. “Also the vertical component that other systems do not provide.” He characterized Wi-Fi, for example, as “an unmanaged network,” subject to frequent changes without a centralized and continually updated source of certified data.

    NextNav location performance was recently highlighted in side-by-side technology tests conducted by the Communications Security, Reliability, and Interoperability Council (CSRIC) of the FCC, and published in March of this year; see reportage and analysis of these tests at The Inner Edge: Who Holds the Key to Indoor Nav?

    The trial compared the performance of location systems across urban, suburban, and rural areas in the San Francisco Bay Area for determining the location of callers during emergency calls (E911), a critical case for mobile-phone users. NextNav was the only technology capable of reporting a valid height or altitude estimate, enabling floor-level positioning. NextNav’s horizontal accuracy results also reduced first-responder “search rings” by 90 percent over its nearest competitor.

    Don Fuchs, director of business development at Broadcom, added “Nextnav is a metropolitan area location system, which is typically a wider area than that covered by Wi-Fi. Wireless emergency assistance calling (E911) needs a wider venue covered. And across 40 metro areas. Nextnav is wide area, while Wi-Fi is essentially local area.”

    Pattabiraman said that in a typical metro area, NextNav’s terrestrial constellation of beacons is deployed for maximum coverage and minimum GDOP, and is not constrained by capacity like a cellular network. He stated that the San Francisco Bay area covered by NextNav extends to 900 square miles, from South San Jose into Marin County and East Bay. “With a fraction of the beacons required for cellular coverage in the same area, which would be in the neighborhood of a few thousand antenna installations, our deploy and operating costs are much less. Less than 20 percent of that for a cellular network.”

    In comparison with Locata, another recently rolled out terrestrial constellation designed to fill GNSS gaps, Pattabiraman said, “Locata and NextNav are two entirely different systems serving different needs.  We are in the mass-market commercial cell phone wide area use case, filing that gap, providing 5–10 meter accuracy, with vertical as a critical component, and full market coverage. Locata covers centimeter-level precision application in localized environments. The two companies could both eventually get to the other side [of the market-sector spectrum], but currently each of us is focused on the particular requirements of our designated market areas. Also, we operate with licensed spectrum versus the Locata operation in 2.4 GHz unlicensed.”

    “At the highest level, they are both multi-lateration systems.  Time of arrival, time difference of arrival.  We arrive at our core synchronization via GPS, which has its own synchronization, but we’ve got our IP  on top of that to improve it.  Each beacon is autonomous.  You can drop it anywhere with a clear view of the sky, and it is synchronized to the rest of the network, it has its own self-synchronizing mechanisms.  Locata is a synchronized network.

    “Another way of looking at it, they have a replacement for GPS. We do more complementing for GPS, we count on GPS being there.”

    Broadcom’s Fuchs added, “From the perspective of a company designing GPS and GNSS client-side semiconductors, we view NextNav as a terrestrial constellation, no more difficult or challenging than adding support for any new or legacy constellation like BeiDou or GLONASS.  We see this integration as being very straightforward, we have lots of IP in the area of signal processing, these sort of signals, this sort of positioning algorithm. We add NextNav as a secondary technology for challenging urban conditions. We view this as a piece of location technology to develop and integrate as the market demands.

    “In six years at Broadcom and seven before that at Global Locate (acquired by Broadcom in 2007), we have a history of turning support like this, we’ve been able to do this very quickly.  Depending on market demand, in less than a year.  I can’t lay out a roadmap at this point.  We expect to see market demand for this, certainly expect regulatory demand.  We wanted to get to the point where we can react to that in less than a year. That was the motivation to get this agreement into place, and we are now positioned.”

    “We all operate under standard operating environments as specified by the FCC. We’re metro-wide just like paging towers or broadcast TV,” continued Pattabiraman. “We’re not necessarily doing anything different as regards the indoor environment.  We’re not adding anything additional to the noise spectrum or floors. Our maximum transmission is 30 watts, very small compared to cell transmission in kilowatts. It is bits per second by the time it hits the receiver.  Because it’s calibration for navigation, the network design is optimized for location. We take into account GDOP and coverage, maximizing the latter, minimize the former. There is a very low throughput. It’s a tradeoff between power and coding.  We code the heck out of this thing.  We just new a few bits to get our information through, not like cellular that needs to get megabits through.”

    As to any data or issues about the human health impacts of an RF-rich indoor environment, Pattabiraman concluded, “There’s none of this concern about power into your head. We transmit only at the tower, receive only at the user. It is very, very heavily coded, like GPS, and very low-powered.  It’s not even close [to cell transmission power].  We’re a feather, they’re a hammer.”

    List of NextNav Covered Metro Areas

    NextNav characterizes San Francisco as built to “commercial grade” and the other markets as “Initial Builds.”

    • Boston-Worcester-Lawrence, ME
    • Syracuse, NY-PA
    • New York-North New Jersey, NY-NJ
    • Philadelphia-Wilmington-Atlantic City, PA-NJ-DE-MD
    • Washington-Baltimore, DC-MD
    • Greensboro-Winston-Salem-High Point, NC-VA
    • Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, NC
    • Jacksonville, FL-GA
    • Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill, SC
    • Orlando, FL
    • Miami-Fort Lauderdale, FL
    • Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL
    • Atlanta, GA-AL-NC
    • Cincinnati-Hamilton, OH-KY-IN
    • Columbus, OH
    • Pittsburgh, PA-WV
    • Cleveland-Akron, OH-PA
    • Detroit-Ann Arbor-Flint, MI
    • Grand Rapids-Muskegon-Holland, MI
    • Milwaukee-Racine, WI
    • Chicago-Gary-Kenosha, IL-IN-WI
    • Indianapolis, IN-IL
    • Nashville, TN-KY
    • Memphis, TN-AR-MS-KY
    • New Orleans, LA-MS
    • St. Louis, MO-IL
    • Kansas City, MO-KS
    • Oklahoma City, OK
    • Dallas-Fort Worth, TX-AR-OK
    • Houston-Galveston-Brazoria, TX
    • San Antonio, TX
    • Denver-Boulder-Greeley, CO-KS-NE
    • Salt Lake City-Ogden, UT-ID
    • Las Vegas, NV-AZ-UT
    • Phoenix-Mesa, AZ-NM
    • Los Angeles-Riverside-Orange County, CA-AZ
    • San Diego, CA
    • San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, CA
    • Portland-Salem, OR-WA
    • Seattle-Tacoma-Bremerton, WA

     

  • Spirent Announces Carrier-Approved A-GNSS Record and Playback Solution for Mobile Device Testing

    Spirent Announces Carrier-Approved A-GNSS Record and Playback Solution for Mobile Device Testing

    Spirent now offers A-GNSS record and playback capabilities for mobile device testing.
    Spirent now offers A-GNSS record and playback capabilities for mobile device testing.

    Spirent Communications today announced the availability of carrier-approved Assisted GNSS Record and Playback capabilities on its Hybrid Location Technology Solution (HLTS).  This new A-GNSS Record and Playback capability provides unprecedented realism and repeatability by recording GNSS signals in the field and delivering synchronized assistance data over a radio access interface to test the A-GNSS positioning performance of mobile devices in the lab.

    “With user location playing a key role in most smartphone services and applications, A-GNSS positioning performance greatly influences the end-user experience,” said Nigel Wright, vice president of wireless, Spirent Communications.  “This new A-GNSS Record and Playback solution enables device manufacturers and network operators, as well as chipset and technology vendors, to accurately test this essential technology using real-world field conditions.  This helps ensure high quality LBS and emergency service performance for every mobile subscriber.”

    Combining GNSS signals from multiple satellite positioning systems (such as GPS and GLONASS) with assistance data delivered by the network to the device, A-GNSS is regarded as the most universal and precise positioning technology. As such, it is used in mobile devices to support the location information required by commercial services, social media and emergency services such as E911.

    Although established A-GNSS simulation tools play an important role in generating repeatable and reliable controlled environments in the lab, they can have limitations when it comes to representing the full range of challenging conditions experienced by mobile users on live networks. Spirent’s A-GNSS Record and Playback addresses these limitations by capturing conditions in the field and playing them back in a reliable and repeatable lab environment. This helps to reduce device time to market and control testing cost by reducing the need for extensive field testing.

    Spirent HLTS is recognized by the industry for its unique capabilities that span a wide range of test requirements from early R&D phases to mobile device acceptance. The HLTS now incorporates Spirent’s GSS6400 GNSS Record and Playback System (RPS), together with patent-pending SimHybrid software that generates and delivers the correct assistance data, synchronized with the recorded GNSS signals.

    For more information on Spirent HLTS and A-GNSS Record and Playback, visit the Spirent website.

  • Rx Networks Creates Quad-Constellation Global Reference Network

    Rx Networks, Inc., a mobile location technology and services company, today announced that it is upgrading its GPStream GRN (Global Reference Network) to include support for the BeiDou and Galileo constellations alongside its GPS and GLONASS assistance services. The upgrade will be completed by the end of this year with commercial service starting in 2014. The announcement came at ION GNSS 2013 in Nashville, Tennessee.

    With the official release of the Chinese BeiDou specifications in late 2012 and the rollout plans for Galileo, several semiconductor vendors will soon be introducing chipsets capable of supporting these new GNSS constellations. Multi-constellation devices receiving GNSS assistance data from GPStream GRN will have much greater success in areas where satellite visibility is severely limited, such as urban canyons or indoors, the company said.

    GPStream GRN is the foundation on which Rx Networks’ and third-party real-time and predictive Assisted-GNSS products operate, as used by more than 700 million smartphones worldwide. Backed by a 99.999% Service Level Agreement, GPStream GRN is already a proven source of real-time assistance data for most North American mobile operators for their E911 location platforms.

    “Our reference network will be the first to commercially support all four constellations,” said Ryan Reilly, Product Manager, “reaffirming our leadership position on Assisted GNSS solutions for the mobile market.”

    For more information, visit the Rx Networks booth at ION GNSS+ 2013.