Irish Robotics

Embedded systems design.

GPS

Over the years we have developed a number GPS tracking solutions utilising both modules and chip sets. Going back to the early 1990's, our first designs used the Rockwell Jupiter module. Measuring 40mm by 70mm it was massive by todays standards - it's only slightly smaller than our current VT25g!

As GPS technology improved, modules and chip sets reduced in size and baseband processors became ever more powerful. Taking advantage of this allowed us to produce designs were the application actually ran on the GPS baseband processor. Examples of this include porting eCos to run on the SiRF Star II chip (ARM7 core) set and writing bare-metal applications for the Nemerix NJ1030 (SPARC core).


Advantages of this approach include:

  • reduced PCB size,
  • reduced BOM cost,
  • reduced power consumption.