GPS
GPS - Personal Navigation Devices
Personal navigation devices, leveraging the GPS and/or Galileo satellite infrastructure, represented a 25 million unit market in 2007, with analysts forecasting a 32% CAGR and volumes reaching more than 56 million units by 2011. GPS position awareness is increasingly important in a variety of other devices too, and is being integrated into more capable SoCs. MIPS Technologies enables this market with processor and analog IP and additional support from the MIPS Ecosystem.
At the simplest level, the GPS system block diagram of a Personal Navigation Device (PND) is well represented with MIPS processor and analog IP, from the RF analog front end to the processor augmented engines. MIPS Technologies has the solutions to lock onto the signal, acquire and process the position navigation sequences, determine positioning and then enable the navigation system with ecosystem applications such as graphical map rendering and text-to-speech support under Linux or WinCE RTOSs.
Low-power GPS requires large data storage for maps and other location-based services such as real-time traffic reports. PND SoCs are increasingly incorporating graphics, both 2D and 3D, to improve the user experience. This increased functionality is driving the need for more processing performance while keeping power consumption to a minimum.
For standalone systems, the MIPS32® M4K® and MIPS32® 4KE® processor cores offer the necessary performance while optimizing cost and power. When GPS is a subsystem, cores like the MIPS32® 24KETM offer the higher performance needed for integrated functionality supported by Linux or WinCE RTOSs, while still providing long battery life.
