u-blox has upgraded its core CMOS technology to u-blox 6. Products based on u-blox 6 will have dramatically reduced power requirements thanks to new intelligent power management features, the company said. The innovations enable significantly extended battery life for power-critical GPS applications.

With the extension of the acquisition engine to more than two million correlators, the new chip exhibits stronger acquisition capability of weak signals and a shorter time to first fix. In addition to GPS, u-blox 6 is future-proofed for the upcoming new European satellite system Galileo.

u-blox 6 also supports the company’s proprietary YUMA GPS software and service, an instantaneous and low power location capture solution based on u-blox’“Capture & Process” technology. u-blox claims that Capture & Process is the lowest power solution for battery-powered applications such as tracking and photo geotagging. u-blox 6 is designed for real-time GPS products as well as low-power logger applications that require weeks or months of battery life. Existing u-blox customers will benefit from the pin-to-pin compatible products, the company said. Key application areas for u-blox-6 based products include ultra-low power GPS loggers, asset and fleet management, people and animal trackers, automotive GPS black boxes, personal navigation and recreational devices, and cameras and camera phones with geotagging capability. u-blox 6 integrated circuits will be available in standard and automotive-grade versions.