The relentless climb in GPS volumes, and associated fall in prices, especially in the automotive market, mean that the OEM card or module is too expensive for the equipment builder to purchase, but gives inadequate profit margin for the OEM card supplier. Both the GPS company and the car electronics company need to reduce their costs. In the former case, the solution is a flexible, low component count, low cost chipset. In the case of the car electronics company, the solution is to embed a chipset on the motherboard, but this is a little more difficult as they seldom have the required expertise in RF technology and in GPS software. The chipset described solves all these problems as a single chip radio, single chip 3.3 V processor that includes 12-channel hardware correlators, ROM and RAM are all that are needed for a complete GPS receiver, and the radio application information, and GPS software are available under licence to all high volume system builders. Two of the twelve channels are configured to support either GPS or INMARSAT satellites (WAAS/EGNOS) PRN codes, allowing the system to support these services as soon as they open.
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