Swindon-based start-up
Air Semiconductor has given
details of its first product, a semiconductor device which it
claimed will provide low power and cost effective GPS location
technology in mobile phones and digital cameras.
Called the Airwave-1, the chip tracks the user’s location and will
provide instant location updates.
One potential application, said the company, is embedding the
technology in digital cameras so that they can automatically tag
images with location data.
Air said it sees market potential for an instant and continuous
location capability as a standard digital camera feature. The
consumer demand is evident from on-line communities such as Google
Earth and Flickr, where over two million images a month are already
geotagged manually.
“Continuous location in battery operated devices is a breakthrough
with wide-reaching implications; digital cameras is just the tip of
the iceberg,” said Stephen Graham, co-founder and CEO at Air.
The company, which was founded by David Tester and Stephen Graham,
has spent the
last 18 months developing proprietary technology that lies at
the heart of the chip.
The company is backed by Pond Venture Partners and is already in
initial discussions with several digital camera
manufacturers.
Airwave-1 provides continuous location tracking by effectively
eliminating time-to-first-fix and uses an adaptive technology which
maintains a constant watch on its location but can almost instantly
focus to provide a pin-point fix.
The single-chip contains all RF and digital hardware and the
software needed to calculate location data.
According to the company, power consumption can be 1% of the power
required by current GPS systems and the chip consumes only 1mA when
continuously tracking.
Samples will be available in the summer of 2008.