Broadcom GNSS Single Chip Wins CITE Innovation Gold Award

Broadcom shares the industry's first GNSS single-chip innovation for wearable applications at CITE 2014, which is expected to accelerate the popularity of low-power, high-volume wearable devices. From April 10 to April 12 at the second China Electronics Information Expo (CITE) jointly organized by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and Shenzhen Municipal People's Government, Broadcom’s GNSS SoC chip BCM4771 won "CITE 2014 Gold Award for Innovative Products and Applications."

According to the experts of the CITE Innovation Products and Applications Awards Selection Committee, "The BCM4771 is not only the industry's first single chip solution for GNSS, but also the industry's first global positioning chip for wearable devices. It will integrate positioning functions and integrated sensors. Hub, context awareness, and GNSS system integration significantly reduce power consumption and size.”

At the new technology conference held in the same period at CITE2014, Jerry Wang, business development director of the GPS division of Broadcom Mobile and Wireless Group, introduced several advantages of this innovative solution:

1. Provide more accurate measurement data (such as speed and distance) for the growing fitness and wearable device applications, can more accurately track and manage the user's health status, and thus help improve user experience and satisfaction.

2. Compared with the existing global navigation satellite system (GNSS) solutions, the power consumption is reduced by 75% through the innovation of chip architecture and various power-saving technologies, which can meet the requirements of the wearable device market to extend battery life.

3. Integrated on-chip sensor hub (Sensor Hub), which can integrate multiple sensor input data, run on-chip algorithms to detect usage scenarios, and enable a wearable device with GNSS and multiple sensors to be installed with a total bill of materials The cost of the BOM is lower and the complexity is also reduced.

Jerry pointed out that relevant market research data shows that about half of the future wearable devices will be equipped with global satellite positioning functions, mainly including sports, fitness and health care equipment, and the market has broad prospects. For location tracker wearable applications such as healthy wristbands, the business model is built around data, because the accuracy of the data determines the user's experience and brand loyalty, so the quality of software algorithms and data collection and analysis tools is One of the most important factors to achieve product differentiation.

The sensor hub included in the BCM4771 can integrate sensor input data, run on-chip algorithms to detect usage scenarios, accurately calculate the speed and distance of the user's movement, and continuously monitor user activity levels and historical locations. Improving measurement accuracy is ideal for fitness tracker applications.

For wearable device applications, low power consumption is always an important requirement. "The BCM4771 integrates a low-power GPS and sensor hub to enable background positioning and fusion location processing on a single low-power GNSS chip, and Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity can be directly interfaced through this on-chip sensor hub. On-chip GNSS 'light' capability to implement a low-power hub that supports always-on background positioning and context awareness.” Jerry said, “In addition, the BCM4771 does not need to host AP (512KB) to participate and can store WiFi/Bluetooth background locations. Information and batch processing of location information not only saves power consumption, but also reduces design complexity and BOM costs and improves the user experience.”