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.