Low-power GNSS for tracking applications
Optimal performance, minimal power demand
Because of its ability to deliver highly accurate position, velocity, and time data anywhere in the world, GNSS technology has found its way into an ever-growing range of smart, connected solutions. At the same time, users have come to expect more and more of the technology. To stand out today, GNSS-enabled devices need to outperform competing solutions in terms of accuracy, responsiveness, and power autonomy, often under strong pressure in terms of cost and size.
Particularly in consumer, industrial, and automotive tracking use cases, global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receivers were long considered power hogs. Back in 2010, a single band GNSS receiver in continuous tracking mode consumed just over 120 mW of power. By 2015, that number had come down to around 70 mW. Today, leveraging technological improvements, tracking applications can run on just 25 mW of power.
The past five years have seen the technology’s power autonomy climb to new heights. Today’s low-power GNSS receivers can track a greater number of satellite constellations, each on multiple frequency bands, to deliver greatly improved accuracies faster and with far less power. In some use cases, the GNSS receiver’s power demand can be reduced to a single-digit percentage of the end device’s power budget.
But meeting ambitious power consumption targets can be challenging. Today, it is common for state-of-the-art GNSS receivers to offer a range of settings that can be configured to optimize their power consumption while meeting use case-specific performance requirements.
In this white paper, we present an overview of essential design considerations that can bring down a GNSS receiver’s power demand to a mere fraction of that of a standard GNSS solution. Which of these design considerations applies to a specific use case will depend on a careful balancing of competing factors such as accuracy, dynamic performance, size, and cost.
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