6 ms·
If the cost of receivers comes down sharply, devices might try to use as many networks as possible to get an accurate fix as rapidly as possible. I can definite
by estel 14y ago
If the cost of receivers comes down sharply, devices might try to use as many networks as possible to get an accurate fix as rapidly as possible. I can definitely see GPS-Beidou-Galileo together.
- celoyd 14y agoDefinitely. Mid-range and high-end receivers (for things like ecology surveys and continental drift tracking) integrate GLONASS and GPS already. I don’t have the RF/SP domain knowledge to back this up, but I speculate that multiple low-end receivers for 2–4 of these networks on a single chip might be more useful in practice than a single good receiver for any one network. In other words, a $20 Galileo chip + a $20 GPS chip might give me a faster time-to-fix than a $40 GPS chip. (In terms of units shipped, most GPS goes into phones, where time-to-fix is way more important than centimeter accuracy.)
- pilsetnieks 14y agoEven phones, if they want to be sold in Russia, integrate GLONASS and GPS now.
- rwg 14y agoThere's no reason mobile phones with GPS-only chipsets can't be sold in Russia -- they just get hit with ~25% import duties that phones with GLONASS-supporting chipsets don't have. I wouldn't be surprised at all if China does something similar with Beidou and mobile phones sold in China.
- shawn-butler 14y agoiOS and iPhone hardware since the 4s has supported both aGPRS and GLONASS. Qualcomm snapdragon parts also supported both (so the S2 maybe?) Faster time to fix translates into longer battery life. Whether this matters in practice for much of the Continental US I don't know.