NXP drives adoption of location-based services with low cost, multimedia-enabled navigation device solution

location based services

Highly integrated Nexperia personal media player solution combines GPS navigation and rich multimedia capabilities for connected consumers on-the-go
Eindhoven, The Netherlands – Paving the way for increased adoption of location-based services, NXP Semiconductors today announced a full solution for low-cost, portable GPS devices with advanced multimedia capabilities. Building on NXP’s Nexperia™ mobile multimedia processor PNX0190, the new offering includes NXP Software’s swGPS™ Personal, a groundbreaking software solution for GPS, along with ALK Technologies’ industry-leading CoPilot® navigation software – providing everything a designer needs to build a low-cost, multimedia-rich portable media player (PMP) with navigation capability for connected consumers on-the-go. The solution will be showcased at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada from January 8-11.
Traditional GPS solutions require hardware GPS baseband processors. In contrast, NXP’s solution utilizes swGPS Personal running on the PNX0190 multimedia processor to efficiently perform GPS calculations. By eliminating the costly GPS baseband silicon, NXP’s solution delivers a low bill of material while the software-based approach provides flexibility and future-proofing in an evolving market, enabling in-the-field upgrades to offer new features as soon as they become available.
In addition to its proprietary swGPS Personal software, the NXP solution incorporates navigation software from ALK Technologies. According to Michael Kornhauser, Vice President at ALK Technologies, Inc., “The combination of NXP’s PMP/GPS technology and ALK’s CoPilot GPS Navigation software provides a highly integrated, ready-to-go solution for the delivery of portable navigation systems that are finally both practical and affordable for the average consumer. What’s more, our close collaboration with NXP has resulted in a vibrant and easy-to-use navigation experience, complete with powerful trip calculation, smooth transition and visually appealing overlays for safe and reliable GPS navigation anywhere in the world.”
NXP’s swGPS Personal software solution leverages the powerful PNX0190 processor to provide first-rate, yet cost-effective, GPS performance. swGPS Personal can supply continuous position updates every second to ensure smooth tracking, cold start times of below 35 seconds and the algorithms can be tuned to suit automotive or pedestrian use.
NXP’s solution successfully pairs high-quality navigation capability with rich multimedia processing, including MP3 playback, standard and high-definition video playback and recording, FM radio, image tank, and gaming.
While in the car or on foot, MP3 playback can be done in parallel when using the device for navigation, and songs are interrupted when voice guidance is needed. In addition, the video playback function provides a visually enhanced user experience. For example, a user seeking a particular Point of Interest (POI), such as a restaurant, movie theater or retail outlet, can not only obtain turn by turn directions to the POI, but can also obtain external and internal visuals of the building/location itself. Lastly, in addition to allowing entertainment applications to be viewed on the move, NXP’s PMP solution also allows viewing from home when docked to an HDTV.
“In addition to navigation capability, our solution also offers exceptional image quality and a vast array of rich multimedia features – which many expensive GPS alternatives cannot support,” said Cor Hovius, director of marketing and strategy, Business Line Personal Entertainment Solutions at NXP Semiconductors. “This distinctive blend of high-quality navigation and multimedia with superior value allows both OEMs and ODMs the opportunity to produce a new breed of low-cost, GPS-equipped PMP devices – catering to a much wider audience and helping to expedite the mass adoption of location-based services within the wireless industry.”
NXP’s solution is based on the NXP mobile multimedia processor PNX0190, the NXP swGPS Personal software with the NXP UAF1572 GPS radio IC and ALK’s CoPilot navigation software.
Availability
The Nexperia multimedia-enabled navigation device solution will be available in Europe, U.S. and APAC in the second half of 2007.
About NXP
NXP is a top 10 semiconductor company founded by Philips more than 50 years ago. Headquartered in the Netherlands, the company has 37,000 employees working in 20 countries across the world. NXP creates semiconductors, system solutions and software that deliver better sensory experiences in mobile phones, personal media players, TVs, set-top boxes, identification applications, cars and a wide range of other electronic devices. News from NXP is located at www.nxp.com.