Qualcomm Supporting Galileo GNSS Across Its Product Lines

Qualcomm said it’s supporting the European Galileo Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) across its product portfolios. The company began implementing hardware support for Galileo several years ago in select chipsets, and now offers what it called the industry's first “pervasive,” end-to-end location-services platform for smartphone, computing, infotainment, telematics and IoT applications. The Qualcomm IZat location services platform uses up to six satellite constellations concurrently without incremental device hardware or cost, and users benefit from more than 80 different satellites when calculating global position for navigation or location-based applications, Qualcomm said Tuesday. The addition of another GNSS is intended to provide more accurate location performance, faster time-to-first-fix, and improved robustness worldwide, “particularly in challenging urban environments where the combination of narrow streets and tall buildings can reduce accuracy,” the company said. The feature is integrated in the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 800, 600 and 400 processors and modems, and Galileo will be supported on smartphones and compute devices through software releases for Snapdragon 820, 652, 650, 625, 617 and 435 processors; automotive infotainment solutions incorporating Snapdragon 820A; telematics and IoT solutions with Snapdragon X16, X12, X7 and X5 LTE modems; and Qualcomm 9x15 and MDM6x00 modems, said the company.