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Blue Sky announce GPS squeezed into a SIM card! |
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Written by Marc Pell
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Thursday, 26 April 2007 |
 With GPS becoming a must have (see this month's poll results on the right of the page for proof of that!) the development of a GPS receiver that squeezes itself into a SIM card is pretty impressive news! That's exactly what BlueSky have developed, seemingly overcoming the potential pitfalls of picking up satellites on a piece of hardware that size sandwiched between circuit boards and a battery.
Impressive stuff eh? 
Quote:
It's A-GPS, so much of the processing is done off the SIM, using data sent over SMS or similar, but the technical challenges are still considerable.
BlueSky Positioning CEO Risto Savolainen said: "We are only allowed [by the GSM SIM standard] to draw six milliamps, which was a challenge."
One of many, it would seem. When it comes to picking up the GPS signal Blue Sky Positioning had a novel approach: "Most antennas are designed in free space, to have nothing around them. We started out knowing that there would be metal all around us. That's our secret - how the antenna works, but when we take away the battery, take the SIM out of the phone, the signal is no longer there."
The SIM is of standard size and shape, though wouldn't pass the full ISO tests for flexibility and robustness.
Blue Sky Positioning says it's already got prototypes and is working with SIM manufacturers to start production. It expects to have production samples by July, so we'll have to wait until then to find out the final utility and cost of the concept.
[Source]
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 26 April 2007 )
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