Today, Broadcom announced that its portfolio of services would be enriched with a Wi-Fi Positioning System. The company said it would integrate and deploy the Wi-Fi positioning developed by Skyhook Wireless and which can determine position by triangulating nearby cell towers rather than satellite-based GPS.

The Assisted-GPS Server eliminates the time to “acquire satellites” by tracking satellites and providing GPS position data. According to the company, the time to first fix (TTFF) is boosted from minutes to seconds and can also work in urban and indoor environments, where traditional GPS services cannot be used. The company announced that over 20 million active customers in over 170 countries are currently supported by its LBS services business.

The Wi-Fi triangulation comes in to complement GPS, which can work very well on outdoor environments, but experiences signal blocking when buildings and trees are around. Also, satellite signals are rather unreceived indoors. Broadcom's Assisted GPS will be supplemented with cellular and WiFi triangulation of Skyhook Wireless and the company will integrate the Skyhook solution into its chipsets and services.

The accurate location information produced by Skyhook Wireless solution relies on the detection of Wi-Fi access points which are then compared against a known database of geo-located points. According to Broadcom, the integration of Skyhook’s positioning capabilities into its popular wireless chips is expected to allow mobile device and personal navigation device (PND) manufacturers to provide a single, integrated hybrid positioning solution able to fulfill the needs of end users all over the world.

“We’ve made a significant investment in positioning systems such as GPS and AGPS, and in delivering integrated end-to-end platforms that improve the overall performance and user experience on mobile devices,” said Scott Pomerantz, Vice President & General Manager of Broadcom’s GPS line of business. “By integrating Wi-Fi positioning with our GPS, Wi-Fi and integrated combo chipsets, we are able to deliver a truly unique hybrid positioning system as part of a single platform.”

There is no need for new hardware with Skyhook’s Wireless hybrid positioning system (XPSTM), which can work both outdoor and indoor, is capable of providing with more accurate location data than current technologies, especially when it comes to crowded areas. The new Wi-Fi positioning services offered by Broadcom are expected to turn the company into a supplier of hosted LBS products and end-to-end solutions.