Thursday, February 5. 2009

SiRF Technology’s GPS Solutions in SYNC with Ford Cars…Literally

SiRF Technology is providing the GPS chip set for Ford Motor Corporation’s SYNC technology to support location-based applications. SYNC was developed jointly with Microsoft and was launched 18 months ago on selected Ford vehicles. It is an in-dash system for advanced connectivity, communication and entertainment but, as importantly, functions as platform for many other applications that can be expanded when the demand is needed.  On January 8th at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Ford announced that SYNC’s new features will now include Traffic by INRIX and driving directions supported by TeleNav that leverage SiRF’s technology.

SiRF is working with M/A-COM Technology Solutions, a tier 1 electronics supplier to Ford that is supplying an integrated module to Ford that includes the SiRF chip set with antenna, receiver, and memory as well as a Bluetooth-enabled phone. M/A-Com is responsible for linking location to the car’s architecture bus and making sure it works indoors as well as outdoors.

The technology of M/A-Com and SiRF that is being supplied to Ford will use the car’s architecture bus to take information from the car’s many other sensors to compliment the GPS. Using a SiRF Star II GPS chip set, SiRF developed new software architecture to work with the car’s sensors.  This allows the SiRF GPS chips to calibrate the vehicle’s sensors, such as an internal gyroscope, and the vehicle’s sensors will in turn support location determination if a GPS signal is not available.

When GPS is not reliable, the combined measurements of speed and heading as well as the odometer are used to determine the vehicles location. The vehicle’s internal gyroscope is involved to help also determine whether the car is going forward or reverse so that location accuracy will be maintained. Other vehicle sensors are so accurate so as to detect whether the wheels are drifting and if the car tires are expanding, both of which might affect the vehicle’s position over long distances. In that case, the M/A-COM modules is sophisticated enough to perform the recalibration needed to correct location. 

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