14 DAY TRIAL // The global positioning system (GPS) has become the world's most important navigation tool over the past few years, helping just about everyone, from drivers to plane pilots and ship captains, to be constantly informed of their whereabouts and find the best route to their destination. And since one of the most important factors in the case of any GPS receiver is the number of supported channels, the Swiss company u-blox has developed a very innovative GPS module, which supports tracking on no less than 50 channels
Thus, the LEA-5 GPS module series is based on u-blox' fifth generation positioning engine, u-blox 5, which boasts an acquisition performance of less than one second. Furthermore, these stand-alone GPS receivers combine an extensive array of features with flexible connectivity options, their ease of integration resulting in fast times-to-market for a wide range of automotive, consumer and industrial applications.
"The LEA-5 GPS module series brings the high performance of the u-blox 5 positioning engine to the industry standard LEA form factor", said Karsten Tietz, u-blox Vice President Sales EMEA. This new generation is backwards compatible and ensures our customers an easy migration from LEA-4 module designs, with even better performance and improved cost-efficiency."
As mentioned earlier, the u-blox 5 provides quite a fast acquisition time thanks to its 50-channel GPS architecture with over 1 million correlators and separate acquisition and tracking engines, capable of massively parallel searches. Combined with u-blox' AssistNow A-GPS service, the u-blox 5 chip and module generation acquires satellites in less than one second.
Furthermore, the LEA-5H GPS module comes with a Flash EPROM that allows users to carry out easy firmware upgrades and set-up configuration saving options, while the ROM-based LEA-5S offers further cost efficiencies. Additionally, both modules feature u-blox' OMA SUPL compliant A-GPS interface and support AssistNow Online and AssistNow Offline A-GPS services.
"These LEA-5 modules are ultra fast and boast an impressive -160 dBm acquisition and tracking sensitivity. These features, added to the module's small size and low cost make them ideally suited for use in mass market GPS-enabled consumer devices," said u-blox Chief Executive, Thomas Seiler. Unfortunately, though u-blox representatives said nothing about the moment when the first GPS navigation devices equipped with the new receivers will hit the market, they'll probably arrive at some point towards mid-2008.
We are just a few, but there are many of you, Softpedia users, out there. That's why we thought it would be a good idea to create an email address for you to help us a little in finding gadgets we missed. Interesting links are bound to be posted with recognition going mainly to those who submit. The address is 
.