NemeriX, a fabless semiconductor company specialising in ultra low power semiconductors and solutions for GPS and location-based service devices, and Bosch Sensortec Gmbh, a supplier of Mems sensors for consumer markets, announced the integration of their technology to deliver a multi-sensing GPS solution.
The solution integrates the Bosch Sensortec SMD500 pressure sensor with NemeriX’s navigation solution, offering the ability to identify if a vehicle is travelling on the upper or lower levels in a multi-level or stacked road, and enhancing turn-by-turn navigation in situations where traffic is travelling in the same direction on different levels of a road system, or where two-way traffic is accommodated.
By enabling fast and accurate determination of altitude in a way that is not possible simply by tracking a user’s speed or direction, the technology developed by NemeriX and Bosch Sensortec facilitates timely notification of approaching exits on stacked roads, and early detection of wrong exits when two roads are separating in almost parallel directions, but with different slopes – a very common situation in freeway “clover leaf” configurations.
Even with high-performance GPS systems, typically the vertical accuracy that is achieved is significantly lower than the horizontal accuracy. This effect can be aggravated when the lower road is obstructed by the higher road, causing very high multipath that further degrades vertical accuracy.
This new state-of-the-art solution enables the vertical performance to be significantly improved to the level where a typical road-to-road vertical distance of 10 meters or more can be unambiguously resolved. By combining high resolution barometric air pressure measurement data with non-biased, lower resolution GPS-derived altitude, the two companies have delivered a solution to the altitude conundrum within performance, cost, size and power consumption parameters that have not been seen before.
The SMD500 pressure sensor developed and manufactured by Bosch Sensortec provides a high degree of resolution in air pressure measurement while at the same time featuring very small package size and ultra low power consumption, as required for mobile devices.
