The GNSS market landscape is expanding due to the rapid growth of GNSS-enabled wearables and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) coupled with new innovation opportunities around low-cost precision GNSS, according to ABI Research’s latest GNSS IC vendor report.
In its latest GNSS IC vendor competitive analysis, ABI Research determines Broadcom and Qualcomm remain the two top IC vendors for the fourth year in a row with a mere two points separating MediaTek in third from u-blox in fourth.
New threats emerge to shake up the landscape in the years ahead, though, with CEC Huada and Samsung now companies to watch, the report said.
“MediaTek and u-blox once again swapped places,” said Patrick Connolly, Principal Analyst at ABI Research. “U-blox had another stellar year financially and, along with Skytraq, led the way on low-cost precision GNSS with its NEO-M8P module. MediaTek, which showed significant success in wearables and smartphones, transitioned back to third place primarily due to growing market share.”
Broadcom and Qualcomm remain the two top GNSS IC vendors. Within the past year, Broadcom spurred more headlines with its wearables success and its initial work on L1/L5 dual-frequency receivers. Qualcomm continues to lead in total GNSS shipments, as well as innovative new technologies like LED/VLC and LTE Direct, according to the report. Its partnership with Baidu on its IZat platform is also notable and represents the beginning of the era of “always on, ubiquitous location technologies.”
But the incumbents are not the only players to watch in this evolving market. CEC Huada and Samsung sit poised to instill great change in the market landscape, as their innovation over the past 12 months serves to prove.
“CEC Huada developed single frequency RTK GPS, as well as BDS receivers and INS/MEMS receivers, which the company released to select customers in 2016,” Connolly said. “And it is now developing a dual frequency BDS receiver and a receiver for IRNSS. Samsung, meanwhile, launched its first embedded GNSS solution, the Exynos CPU chipset. Given its presence across so many GPS-enabled consumer electronic devices, the company looks set to be a major disruptor in the coming years.”
Farlin Halsey has been named president and chief executive officer of Hemisphere GNSS, effective Jan. 2, 2017. He replaces Xinping Guo, interim president and CEO. Halsey has also been appointed to the Hemisphere board of directors, where Guo will continue to be a member.
With more than 25 years of executive leadership experience in the high-technology electronics industry, Halsey brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to Hemisphere, according to a company statement. Serving in a range of executive officer and senior management capacities, he has extensive proven experience in GNSS OEM sales market segments including construction, agriculture, survey and mapping, GIS, automotive, personal (mobile) navigation, handheld devices, application software, and electronic components and modules.
Before joining Hemisphere, Halsey’s executive leadership positions included president and CEO of RF Monolithics, a designer and manufacturer of wireless connectivity products used in integrated circuits, certified modules and machine-to-machine applications. He facilitated the sale of the company to Murata Manufacturing Co. Ltd., where he most recently served as vice president of strategic marketing for Murata Electronics Americas.
Previously, Halsey held executive positions at NovAtel, Inc., including vice president of corporate strategy and alliances and vice president of marketing — roles in which he was instrumental in the acquisition and integration of several companies, as well as developing the company’s successful OEM business strategy. He later played a key role in positioning the company prior to its successful sale to Hexagon AB. Among other roles preceding his executive leadership at NovAtel, Halsey held several marketing and sales management positions at Topcon Positioning Systems, Inc. for the North American market.
“Throughout his career, Farlin has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to develop key corporate strategies to increase a company’s scale and enable it to grow globally,” said Werner Gartner, chairman of Hemisphere’s board of directors. “His understanding of our business, significant international experience, and deep OEM and GNSS industry expertise make him ideally suited to lead Hemisphere as we look to enter the next phase of our growth and development.”
“Hemisphere has long been recognized for its pioneering and trend setting high-precision GNSS technology, and I look forward to leading the company’s talented team as we make the strategic decisions necessary to expand our market share and OEM presence globally,” Halsey said. “Leveraging our rich GNSS experience and strong, core GNSS technologies, along with UniStrong’s manufacturing resources, means that Hemisphere is poised for significant global growth.”
Gartner added, “In conjunction with Farlin joining our company, we thank Xinping Guo for his leadership and guidance as Hemisphere’s interim president and CEO for the past eight months while we conducted an extensive executive search.”
As chairman and general manager of Beijing UniStrong Science & Technology Co. Ltd., which owns 100 percent of Hemisphere GNSS Inc., Guo will continue to be a member of the Hemisphereboard of directors.
Hemisphere GNSS announced the Eclipse P328 OEM module at Intergeo 2016, which was held Sept. 11-13 in Hamburg, Germany. The Eclipse P328 is the next offering in a line of new and refreshed, low-power, high-precision, positioning OEM boards.
Pursuant to a recent announcement of new PNT solutions independent of GPS/GNSS signals, provided via the Iridium constellation, GPS World talked with Jean-Yves Courtois, CEO of Orolia. Orolia has partnered with Satelles to bring new PNT products and services to the global market, with a focus on military, and defense, government and commercial customers worldwide.
Jean-Yves Courtois, CEO of Orolia.
“We are a manufacturer and integrator of timing equipment,” Courtois said. Orolia is the parent company of GPS/GNSS product and service providers Spectracom, McMurdo and Spectratime. “This new STL service is not fully commercialized yet, but it’s operational and it can be tested. Receivers are available and can be integrated into our equipment.
“The timing signal is very accurate and close enough to GPS for most timing applications, although the positioning accuracy is lower than what GPS users are used to. It is an augmentation for timing primarily, and secondarily for positioning.
“In terms of timing accuracy, it provides on the order of tenths of microseconds in accuracy, and this covers a lot of timing applications, very familiar to us and to our customers. This is an ideal timing backup or augmentation of GPS. As number 2 worldwide in high-precision timing, we know this market and its applications very well.”
The STL signal strength is much greater than GNSS because the LEO satellites are much closer. (slide courtesy Satelles)
Because the signal providing the satellite time and location (STL) service emanates from low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, its strength is much greater than GPS and other GNSS signals. Among its key characteristics: it gets good reception inside buildings and beneath other obstructions.
“The STL signal works very well,” Courtois continued. “We were surprised. Satelles is very conservative in their statements, and we got better results than they promised in our tests. They under-promised and over-delivered. It penetrates buildings well, it has unique features and it performs at a high level. So we decided to invest in it. All our engineers are excited about it!
“In positioning it’s closer to fifty meters or more. Much better for fixed objects than for mobile objects. The more mobile, the faster the vehicle, then the lower the positioning accuracy. It’s not directly usable for GPS applications that require a few meters accuracy, but it can be associated with inertial navigation for much better results.
“The signal is encrypted, so you have to subscribe to a service to receive a key, allowing access to the signal.
“Applications are developing based on equipment that will be STL-enabled. For the user it will be transparent. The user will have a different antenna.
“We are also active in tracking and emergency location devices, where this is also of interest. It has some authentication capability, to guarantee that the person who accesses the signal is in the location that he pretends to be.”
“For customers to be able to use this service, there is some integration work to be done, some dedicated STL receivers to integrate into our current hardware set up, and software modifications. Our engineers are ready, we are all ready to work with government and defense organizations and other new clients.”
“Our basic interest is to add some robustness to our equipment for our current customers, and then of course to develop new customers worldwide.”
U‑blox components are at the core of two new GNSS golf products. The golf rangefinder wearables were launched by Voice Caddie, an international brand of rangefinders and trackers based in South Korea.
The T3 Hybrid Golf GPS Watch uses the compact u‑blox UBX‑G7020‑KT professional‑grade GNSS chip, which links with GPS/QZSS or GLONASS satellite systems.
The B1 GPS Band uses the u‑blox UBX‑M8030‑KT professional‑grade GNSS chip, which provides navigation sensitivity and low current consumption. It is compatible with GPS, Galileo, GLONASS and BeiDou satellite systems.
The u‑blox GNSS technology enables the T3 Watch and the B1 Band to automatically detect golf courses and holes, and shows the wearer the driving distance and remaining distance to the hole as well as the distance to the front, middle and back of the green. The T3 Watch also measures short distances.
“Miniaturization is key to our goal to make truly mobile golfing technology wearables,” said Ho‑Hyeong Lee, director of the Research Center at Voice Caddie parent company Ucomm Technology. “The u‑blox GNSS chips are the ideal solution for our products, because of a combination of their compact size, low power‑consumption and low cost. This has helped us to create advanced, comfortable products at the price points we were targeting.”
Both companies foresee further collaboration with high precision GNSS and short range solutions.
Septentrio’s low-power AsteRx-m OEM GNSS board has been selected by Xeos Technologies for use in its new Resolute reference receivers. Designed for high-precision monitoring in low-power applications, the Resolute systems are aimed at structural monitoring and geodetic research in remote locations.
Smaller than a standard credit card, the AsteRx-m board provides centimeter-level dual-frequency L1/L2 GNSS positioning while consuming less than 0.6 W. It incorporates Septentrio’s proprietary tracking and positioning algorithms, providing high accuracy and robust performance in difficult environments.
The Xeos Resolute GNSS receiver is designed for applications such as critical infrastructure monitoring, subsidence monitoring and GPS geodesy in extreme polar environments. The small, lightweight and low-power monitoring station is suitable for solar-powered remote autonomous installations.
In addition to the Septentrio AsteRx-m GNSS board, the Resolute system features dual SD card storage of GNSS data and multiple telemetry options such as Iridium, cellular, Wi-Fi and wireless mesh networks for monitoring, control and data transmission. The Xeos Resolute also features multiple interfaces including USB, RS-232, RS-485, CANBUS and SDI-12.
“Field tests of the prototype Resolute stations have demonstrated reliable RTK centimeter-level performance for remote deformation monitoring,” said Paul Passmore, Xeos Technologies. “We look forward to presenting our test results at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco this week.”
“Xeos Technologies’ Resolute autonomous polar monitoring system is an ideal application for the AsteRx-m technology,” said Neil Vancans, vice president of Septentrio Americas. “The compact AsteRx-m delivers reliable centimeter-level L1/L2 RTK at under 0.6 W in extreme climatic conditions.”
“Building upon our polar Iridium telemetry products, we are teaming with Septentrio to offer a new line of high-performance, low-power GNSS products for remote applications” said Derek Inglis, president of Xeos Technologies.
A number of organizations are focusing on how inertial can help GNSS receivers to provide more stable, reliable position outputs when signals are hard to receive. Papers presented in September at the ION GNSS+ 2016 conference in Portland, Oregon, demonstrate that there is indeed a lot of focused effort in this area.
The conference showcased several integrated inertial GNSS solutions from a range of companies. For example, NovAtel is developing a novel way to make better use of lower precision MEMS inertial for certain land applications. Qualcomm is moving forward with a low-cost visual inertial to advance autonomous vehicle developments. And researchers in Germany from a university spin-off company are studying a multi-sensor solution.
Inertial integration aiding
Many people have heard about the NovAtel SPAN inertial/GNSS system. SPAN inertial-integration-aiding software has now been available integrated on NovAtel GNSS engines for a number of years. Combined with various external inertial packages providing real-time inertial aiding data, this system enables positioning outputs over a wider range of more difficult signal environments where GNSS alone might be too stressed to perform well.
According to the website, NovAtel currently offers SPAN with MEMS inertial products including various models from Honeywell, Litef, Analog Devices and Sensonor, along with a number of fiber-optic and high-precision tactical grade inertial measurement units (IMUs).
Recent SPAN development efforts have been focused on improving the performance of combined GNSS/SPAN/MEMS IMUs. The premise of the work is that in land-vehicle applications, a “land profile” can be applied that constrains velocity based on a range of acceptable vehicle dynamics. This includes applying limits to the cross track and vertical velocities of the vehicle.
In testing this land model, with equipment mounted in the NovAtel test van, three types on IMU were run through three different test scenarios. The IMUs were:
Epson G320 — Low power, small size MEMS IMU
Litef μIMU-IC — Larger tactical-grade performance IMU still based on MEMS sensors
Litef ISA-100C — Near-navigation-grade IMU using fiber optic gyros (FOG).
The three test scenarios involved environments with clear sky, partially obstructed sky view (downtown urban canyon) and a parking garage with no view of the sky and no satellite signal reception.
The Epson MEMS IMU appeared to be at a disadvantage from the beginning, given the higher performance units to which it was being compared. But NovAtel’s objective was to demonstrate that even this lower end device, when combined with GNSS, SPAN and the land profile, enables pretty good positioning results.
Test set-up.
Impact of SPAN land profile in GNSS denied testing.
The tests indicated that positioning with integrated higher performance units did not benefit to the same extent as when coupled with the low-end MEMS units in land-profile mode. Acceptable positioning was indeed possible with the Epson MEMS and when the constraints of land profile were able to limit position excursions when GNSS was lost, as in the parkade tests at Calgary airport shown in the figure above.
Ryan Dixon and Michael Bobye from NovAtel Inc. wrote this ION GNSS+ paper, “Performance Differentiation in a Tightly Coupled GNSS/INS Solution.” Ryan Dixon is the chief engineer of the NovAtel Synchronized Position Attitude Navigation (SPAN) GNSS/INS products, and Mike Bobye is a principal geomatics engineer at NovAtel Inc.
Visual inertial odometry
Qualcomm also presented some interesting results for the integration of visual inertial odometry (VIO) with GNSS. VIO measurements are constructed from a stream of camera frames combined with inertial measurements and can provide high-accuracy relative positioning. In experiments in a not-too-severe urban-canyon environment, this approach has been seen to reduce 95 percent horizontal error by two-thirds compared to GPS alone.
For applications such as autonomous vehicles and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), 50-meter errors, which can be typical for stand-alone GPS in urban canyons, just won’t cut the mustard. So Qualcomm has been looking for another source of aiding that would help reduce errors significantly.
The test set-up used a Sony Xperia Z3 phone as the source for the camera data and separate VIO processing, along with a single-frequency CSR SiRFstarIV GPS module on a custom hardware board for raw pseudorange and Doppler range-rate measurements. A high-precision NovAtel OEM6 GNSS/IMU SPAN-CPT module was used as ground-truth for position measurements.
Two scenarios were used to evaluate the proposed approach. The first scenario is an 870-meter drive in downtown Somerville, New Jersey, with a duration of 261 epochs. This represents a mild urban-canyon environment with loss of signal errors of a few tens of meters.
(Left) Part of the trajectory for the drive testing; (right) walkthrough building with no GPS coverage.
Results from the drive testing include several large GPS errors that the GPS+VIO solution is able to significantly reduce, while the walkthrough building tests appear to demonstrate a continuous GPS+VIO position solution.
“Robust Positioning from Visual-Inertial and GPS Measurements” was written by Urs Niesen, Venkatesan N. Ekambaram, Jubin Jose, Lionel Garin, and Xinzhou Wu, all of Qualcomm Research.
Multiple sensors
Finally, researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in Germany have focused on bringing outputs from as many sensors as economically feasible into an integrated GNSS solution. A precise model for multipath is included that applies amplitude, code delay, phase shift and Doppler shift for each reflected signal. The magnetometer measurements provide rough attitude information, which enables robust GNSS attitude ambiguity fixing.
The ANavS module integrates a multi-constellation u-blox GNSS receiver with a Sensonor 3D accelerometer/gyroscope/magnetometer, a Bosch barometer/thermometer and a built-in dual-band Taoglas GPS/GLONASS antenna. Real-time kinematic (RTK) positioning was tested by TUM students using the measurements from the multi-sensor module and a virtual reference station (VRS). A second multi-sensor module placed on the rear of the vehicle enabled attitude determination.
“Reliable RTK Positioning with Tight Coupling of 6 Low-Cost Sensors” was authored by Patrick Henkel, Technische Universität München, and Houcem Hentati, Advanced Navigation Solutions, Munich, Germany.
All of these options are providing GNSS with the support it needs in tight signal situations.
Septentrio has released version 5.1.0 firmware for the PolaRx5 product line of GNSS reference receivers. The 5.1.0 firmware brings new features for file management, usability, security and seismic monitoring.
Septentrio’s PolaRx5 product line of GNSS reference receivers includes the PolaRx5 for CORS and network operations, the PolaRx5TR for time and frequency transfer and the PolaRx5S for space weather applications.
Improvements in precise point positioning (PPP) have opened the door on seismic monitoring using GNSS technology. As well as allowing precise measurement of long-term slow surface displacement, PolaRx5 now allows real-time recording of the high-frequency vibrations typically accompanying earthquakes. Firmware 5.1.0 introduces the support for on-board PPP and dynamic response tuned for seismic applications.
The 5.1.0 firmware release brings greater logging efficiency to the PolaRx5 users. Storage integrity is crucial for many applications. Retransmitting data can be an expensive business, especially when using Iridium telemetry. To improve archival functionality, Septentrio has developed a storage integrity feature to retransmit only the data which has been lost in the initial transmission. This avoids the common and unnecessary overhead of retransmitting complete files.
Preventing unauthorized access is a crucial aspect of cyber security. PolaRx5 product line is now equipped with firewall and IP filtering, SFTP and ssh keys. This complements and strengthens the user management and access level protection of the PolaRx5 product line.
Various independent tests have shown PolaRx5 consistently ranks highest among GNSS receivers in many areas of measurement quality, including lowest measurement noise and fewest number of cycle slips, and this at the lowest power consumption on the market. The PolaRx5 products offer robust and high-quality GNSS tracking of GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and BeiDou as well as regional satellite systems including QZSS and IRNSS.
Some of those who have recently deployed the PolaRx5 include the Oregon Department of Transport (DOT), UNAVCO, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the SAPOS CORS network in Germany.
“The 5.1.0 PolaRx5 firmware continues Septentrio’s commitment to its customers.” stated Francesca Clemente, PolaRx Product Manager. She continued: “The new features of the 5.1.0 firmware complement existing standard features of the PolaRx5 GNSS receivers such as Advanced Interference Mitigation technology (AIM+) and the web UI offering full user control and status to make PolaRx5 the most complete GNSS reference station on the market today.”
Reyax Technology, an industrial and telematics systems provider for aftermarket telematics, has launched a new industrial router platform that incorporates cellular, short range and GNSS modules from u-blox.
The RYW2000 4G LTE and Wi-Fi hot-spot router platform uses the EVA-M8M, a tiny concurrent GNSS module, a TOBY-L2 cellular LTE module that offers throughput of up to 150 Mb/s with LTE Cat.4, and an ELLA-W131 2.4-GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth module.
“We selected u-blox modules because of their market-leading performance, excellent environmental tolerance characteristics and the fact they develop all of their technology in-house,” said Ritchie Chang, general manager of REYAX Technology. “Our RYW2000 router platform is designed for industrial and telematics applications where performance, reliability and conformance to changing environmental conditions are all critical to the success of our product.”
Front and back of the Toby L2 module.
The new router platform RYW2000 includes a router platform card for Industrial and telematics applications and measures only 50.95mm x 30mm. Its operating condition and power are DC 3.3V-5.5V.
Ming Chiang, country manager of u-blox Taiwan explains, “This is another example of our on-going collaboration with REYAX Technology and we are excited they have chosen to incorporate three of our modules into their RYW2000 product. Together we have a shared vision for the promotional of IoT and M2M technologies to benefit many industries and applications.”
U-blox is introducing a new module designed to speed time to market for system developers of GNSS applications who have limited experience in RF and antenna design.
The SAM-M8Q GNSS receiver with integrated antenna is housed in a tiny 15.5 by 15.5 by 6.3 millimeter package. It can be easily embedded in small devices that require location information, such as asset tracking and telematics systems, and generic automotive after-market applications, u-blox said.
By using the latest u-blox M8 multi-GNSS receiver technology, the module is able to offer simultaneous reception of GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo satellite signals.
Ultra-compact SAM-M8Q module.
The combination of an integrated wide-band antenna along with the module’s SAW filter and low-noise amplifier (LNA)architecture ensures that the SAM-M8Q receiver delivers robust performance in the presence of high frequency signals from other electronic equipment, such as cellular modems, which can cause interference.
“The SAM-M8Q is intended for customers who don’t have much experience in RF and antenna design,” said Kim Kaisti, Director, Product Management, Product Center Positioning. He added, “It is aimed at applications that require an embedded antenna and where the surface mount package allows for easier assembly and installation in the end-equipment.”
Samples of the SAM-M8Q will be available in mid-January 2017. The modules will be in full production in mid-February 2017.
Jackson Labs Technologies Inc. (JLT) has entered the GNSS simulation and synthesis market with the small size, weight and power (SWAP) CLAW GPS/GNSS simulator. The CLAW is only slightly larger than a standard deck of cards.
CLAW targets applications that require small, low-power and low-cost GNSS synthesis with repeatable and highly accurate GNSS RF signals such as production testing of GNSS receivers, simulating GNSS anomalies such as leap-second events, 1023 GPS Week roll-overs, simulated operation in inaccessible locations around the world, real-time transcoding of different GNSS systems, and testing using dynamically user-configured RF signal levels.
With nanosecond-accurate encoding, CLAW is particularly suited to allow easy stress-testing of GPSDO Frequency and Timing Reference products such as JLT’s GNSDOs under various different mission scenarios, the company said.
The CLAW GNSS simulator is a no-frills solution that contains real-time processing hardware to simulate GPS constellations without the need to connect any external equipment other than a USB power source or power supply.
Providing a real-time computed RF output signal rather than an offline file-playback differentiates CLAW from competitive solutions that are only capable of recording and playback operation in non-real-time, or require offline computation of data files using external computers that are played back on the simulation device.
CLAW is a completely self-contained, ruggedized, miniature, real-time hardware GPS simulator.
Navigation coordinates and 1PPS timing pulses can be provided in real-time through the NMEA and SCPI compatible USB interface or via the built-in RS-232 interface, and are encoded in the CLAW into RF GPS signals in real-time with nanosecond-level accuracy and minimal delay.
Position, velocity and timing (PVT) information may be provided as a simple NMEA stream from an external source such as an inertial navigation system (INS), Galileo/GLONASS/BeiDou/SAASM GNSS receiver, and CLAW will encode this PVT data into standard L1 C/A GPS RF signals in real-time with minimal phase/position shifts. This allows real-time GNSS transcoding of any other GNSS standard simply by connecting an external GNSS receiver, INS system or PVT source to the RS-232 inputs of the CLAW, allowing retrofit of existing legacy equipment with the latest GNSS systems.
CLAW includes glueless drivers for Rockwell Collins Remote Secure Receiver (RSR Puck) among others, allowing transcoding of assured, secure L2 P(Y) code into legacy L1 C/A code in real time to retrofit commercial receivers with military P(Y) capability. CLAW also allows user-entry of ephemeris and almanac information, providing a means to simulate any past or future GPS constellation and time/date event.
CLAW was designed with a particular emphasis to encoding the optional externally-provided 1PPS GPS system time with nanosecond-level accuracy targets, allowing accuracy testing of GPS timing and frequency devices on top of simply providing a positioning/velocity reference. CLAW initially will support GPS L1 C/A code encoding with up to 12 satellites, and later versions will support additional GNSS systems such as L2 GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou and Galileo.
A comprehensive cost-free optional user application for Windows will be offered that allows control and monitoring of the unit, creation of simulation scenarios using Google Earth and manual waypoint entry, among other options. The unit also can be controlled via simple serial terminal commands, or various other available public-domain freeware programs.
Once position information is stored in the units’ NVRAM, the unit will generate GPS RF constellations within seconds upon power-up and thus does not require any user interaction other than plugging in the power supply.
CLAW contains a highly accurate and stable internal 10-MHz reference oscillator that may optionally be synchronized by an external 1PPS reference, 10-MHz reference, or both. CLAW supports a user-selectable RF signal attenuation range of 63 dB in 0.5-dB steps, allowing a wide range of RF signal levels to be generated with high accuracy and power-level resolution. Antenna DC power consumption also can be controlled via software command.
CLAW can be powered by its USB interface, or by a 6.5V to 28V DC power feed, and consumes less than 1.7W allowing extended operation of 24 hours or more from low-cost ubiquitous USB consumer battery packs.
CLAW pre-production GPS simulator evaluation units are shipping to select customers, and are priced at $2,995 each.
As manufacturers convert machines and appliances into remotely controllable objects (the Internet of Things), the potential for spoofing expands, perhaps exponentially. Hackers could interfere with the data supplied to autonomous cars or tracks, remotely forcing them to crash.
Although the dangers of GPS spoofing have been pointedly discussed in may technical papers and articles in GPS World since the early 2000s, manufacturers have not devoted much attention to them because there weren’t many devices making use of location-based technologies, according to associate professor Dinesh Manandhar of the University of Tokyo.
With the proliferation of GPS-capable smartphones and other networked devices, “anyone can become a target of the attack,” Manandhar told the Japan Times in a recent interview.
“Too many things today use GPS as a reliable source of location information,” Manandhar said. “People trust the location information from GPS satellites like God. When PCs became common for many people, the sudden outbreak of computer viruses became an issue around the world, and anti-virus software become an essential tool for everyone to protect their data,” he added. “The same thing is now happening around GPS. We need a system to fight back against the risk.”
Manandhar cited some possible examples of spoofing, both by consumers — “You can falsify your smartphone’s information and make it look like you are going back and forth between Tokyo and Hawaii within just three minutes,” and by sophisticated criminals. “Let’s say I were a top manager of a major bank. I could access all the information while sitting at my desk, but I wouldn’t be able to access it from the room next to it. But people could get access to such information if they disguised the location information received by computer.”
Manandhar and many other researchers around the world are developing and testing anti-spoofing techniques, but it is a long step from demonstrated results to integration into products reaching market. “The products we are designing today are ones that we will use five years later. So we must assume the possible risks and prepare for the threats that might jeopardize our society in the future.”
“MediaTek and u-blox once again swapped places,” said Patrick Connolly, Principal Analyst at ABI Research. “U-blox had another stellar year financially and, along with Skytraq, led the way on low-cost precision GNSS with its NEO-M8P module. MediaTek, which showed significant success in wearables and smartphones, transitioned back to third place primarily due to growing market share.”
