BDS III is available via Location.io in a variety of data formats including regionally optimized, NTRIP, LPP, and RRLP, as well as proprietary real-time and predicted formats.  With the addition of BDS III Location.io is positioned to support mobile devices globally in any configuration, including dual-band or single-band GNSS receivers, and in single or multi-constellation configurations.

“Rx Networks continues to follow up on our promise to deliver Location. Enlightened. products and services. BDS will play a major role in the years to come with the uptake of multiband GNSS in mobile devices including smartphones and Internet of Things (IoT) devices.” said Peter Mueller, Head of Innovation at Rx Networks. “The upgrade and expansion of our private global reference network can now offer legacy BDS II signal B1I right up to PRN 63, in addition to the new BDS III B1C and B2a signals, as well as GPS/QZSS/Galileo/GLONASS/NavIC support in L1, L2c and L5/E5. Plus, our network is ready for Galileo E6. This makes Location.io one of the most complete data services available, all with a great Service Level Agreement.”

Look for BDS III to be part of the Location.io software client in early 2020. 

Location.io technologies are already in use by over 2 billion smartphones, laptops, and wearables worldwide. All Location.io services are delivered from Rx Networks’ geo-redundant and cloud-based service delivery network, ensuring 99.999% service level availability.

For more information, please contact sales@rxnetworks.com, visit the Rx Networks booth at ION GNSS+ 2019, or visit rxnetworks.com.

Location. Enlightened.

Rx Networks provides reliable, timely, and relevant location information that strengthens the connection between people, devices and businesses by improving the GNSS experience and creating enhanced opportunities for next-generation products and services.

About Rx Networks Inc.

Rx Networks is a mass-market mobile positioning technology company based in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Since 2006, leading semiconductor vendors, device manufacturers and network operators have quietly relied on for their real-time and predicted processing of GNSS, Wi-Fi, cellular, and sensor data for their location needs. Well over two billion devices use their GNSS assistance data each and every day.

The addition of NavIC builds on Rx Networks’ brand promise—to deliver Location. Enlightened. products and services—by now providing real-time and predicted GNSS assistance data in any individual or combination of formats.  This enables developers to optimize device performance for specific use cases and conform to national requirements. Data is delivered via ephemeris in RINEX and Predictions in SP3, P-GNSS and RT-GNSS, via the Location.io platform, will be added in Q1 of 2020.

“Our Location. Enlightened. brand promise speaks to our goal of providing the most comprehensive, relevant, accurate and reliable location data available,” says John Carley, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Rx Networks. “The addition of NavIC in our carrier-grade infrastructure demonstrates our commitment to our brand and to stay on the leading edge of truly global satellite-based positioning and services. The ability to offer NavIC support is extremely significant as it ensures we can support our customers with exactly what is required in any given region of the Globe.”

NavIC, formerly known as IRNSS (Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System), combines GEO and IGSO satellites to provide a regional position, navigation and time (PNT) system including ionospheric corrections.

The most comprehensive global constellation support in market

With its privately-owned Global Reference Network of more than 40 terrestrial reference sites and the most comprehensive GNSS constellation support in the market, Rx Network is the only mass market mobile positioning and service company to offer a 99.999% Service Level Agreement. This, coupled with their unique algorithms, allows Rx Networks to offer highly accurate and relevant location services.

Location. Enlightened.

Keep an eye out for further details on their new Website: rxnetworks.com, contact sales@rxnetworks.com, or visit the Rx Networks booth at ION GNSS+ 2019.

About Rx Networks Inc.

Rx Networks is a mass-market mobile positioning technology company based in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Since 2006, leading semiconductor vendors, device manufacturers and network operators have quietly relied on for their real-time and predicted processing of GNSS, Wi-Fi, cellular, and sensor data for their location needs. Well over two billion devices use their GNSS assistance data each and every day.

Precise satellite orbit and clock corrections will be available via Rx Networks’ innovative High Accuracy Assistance Service (HAAS) platform, which supports mobile devices with either multi-band or single-band PPP-enabled receivers.  HAASprovides corrections for GPS and GLONASS (with additional constellations to be added in 2018), along with precise regional Ionospheric and Tropospheric data. High availability is assured with geographically redundant secure NTRIP casters.

“Our real-time precise data corrections enable dual-frequency receivers to achieve centimeter accuracy globally, for Precise Point Positioning (PPP),” said Vincent Chen, Product Manager at Rx Networks.  “Early HAAS testing with a standard Android smartphone running as a single-band receiver and standard smartphone antenna shows sub meter accuracy using HAAS orbits and clocks.  These results are exciting because they confirm the HAAS addition to location.io will provide an affordable alternative solution to traditional RTK positioning, bringing high accuracy to a whole new set of markets”.

location.io includes technologies already in use by over 1 billion smartphones, laptops, and wearables worldwide.

All location.io services are delivered from Rx Networks’ geo-redundant and cloud-based service delivery network, ensuring a 99.999% service level availability.

For more information, please contact sales@rxnetworks.com, visit the Rx Networks booth at ION GNSS+ 2018, or visit rxnetworks.com 

About Rx Networks Inc. 

EMPOWER YOUR LOCATION SERVICES

We are a mobile positioning technology company. We don’t do hardware, GPS or sensor chips; we don’t do mobile apps and we don’t do maps either. Yet, we empower all those who do! We develop ingenious hybrid positioning solutions that unify GNSS, Wi-Fi, cellular and sensor signals for an unmatched mobile location user experience.

These new messages will be available in a variety of data formats, including IoT-optimized, NTRIP, LPP, RRLP and proprietary real-time data. The new signals can support mobile devices with either dual-band or single-band GNSS receivers, in single or multi-constellation configurations, in real-time and predicted contexts.

“Multiband is making waves in GNSS for mobile devices like smartphones,” said Peter Mueller, Head of Product Management at Rx Networks. “Thanks to the upgraded and expanded Rx Networks global reference network, I can get L1/E1/B1 plus L2c plus L5/E5, and the network is even ready for Galileo E6, all with a great service level agreement!”

location.io includes technologies already in use by over 1 billion smartphones, laptops, and wearables worldwide.

All location.io services are delivered from Rx Networks’ geo-redundant and cloud based service delivery network, ensuring a 99.999% service level availability.

For more information, please contact sales@rxnetworks.com, visit the Rx Networks booth at ION GNSS+ 2018, or visit rxnetworks.com.

About Rx Networks Inc. 

EMPOWER YOUR LOCATION SERVICES

We are a mobile positioning technology company. We don’t do hardware, GPS or sensor chips; we don’t do mobile apps and we don’t do maps either. Yet, we empower all those who do! We develop ingenious hybrid positioning solutions that unify GNSS, Wi-Fi, cellular and sensor signals for an unmatched mobile location user experience.

The Beijing data centre will be connected to the Rx Networks global reference network and will enable reduced latency and increased throughput and reliability for customers and end-devcies inside the Peoples Republic of China.

“By adding a point of presence inside China, we also add our industry-leading SLA,” said Peter Mueller, Head of Product Management at Rx Networks. “Not only can we provide all our flavours of real-time and predicted GNSS assistance, we can also help our customers with hosted services.”

location.io includes technologies in use by over 1 billion smartphones, laptops, and wearables worldwide.

All location.io services are delivered from Rx Networks’ geo-redundant and cloud based service delivery network, ensuring a 99.999% service level availability.

For more information, please contact sales@rxnetworks.com, visit the Rx Networks booth at ION GNSS+ 2018, or visit rxnetworks.com.

About Rx Networks Inc. 

EMPOWER YOUR LOCATION SERVICES

We are a mobile positioning technology company. We don’t do hardware, GPS or sensor chips; we don’t do mobile apps and we don’t do maps either. Yet, we empower all those who do! We develop ingenious hybrid positioning solutions that unify GNSS, Wi-Fi, cellular and sensor signals for an unmatched mobile location user experience.

The location.io real-time GNSS assistance service includes a new streaming delivery method so customers can easily access SBAS correction data (available for testing). QZSS and SBAS support will be added to location.io’s Real-Time GNSS ephemeris HTTP interface in Q4 of 2016.

Location service providers, GNSS chipset vendors and device OEMs can benefit from the additional corrections and assistance data for better accuracy and higher availability of GNSS location fixes.

“The addition of SBAS and QZSS to location.io marks an exciting step as we expand our services to support high accuracy solutions,” commented John Carley, Director of Product Management, location.io.

With assistance services that span real-time and predicted GNSS ephemeris, ionophseric corrections, and high accuracy long-term orbit and clock predictions, Rx Networks continues to lead the industry. Location.io delivers these services from geo-redundant carrier-grade service delivery networks with a 99.999% service level availability (SLA).

About Rx Networks

EMPOWER YOUR LOCATION SERVICES

We are a mobile positioning technology company with more than ten years experience and a billion plus devices relying on our software and services everyday. We empower our customers with ingenious hybrid positioning solutions that unify GNSS, Wi-Fi, cellular, BLE and sensor signals for an unmatched location user experience. 
Outdoor. Indoor. In 3D.

For more information, please contact sales@rxnetworks.com, visit the Rx Networks booth at ION GNSS+ 2016, or visit rxnetworks.com

Rx Networks Inc., a leading mobile location technology and services company, today announced the launch of location.io, a feature-rich, highly modular location platform. location.io enables advanced, seamless indoor and outdoor positioning whether for mass market consumer devices, IoT devices, or specialized, high-accuracy applications.

This new platform consolidates products and services previously branded GPStream and XYBRID. location.io offers real-time & predicted GNSS assistance, GNSS long-term orbits & clocks, Wi-Fi & Cell-ID positioning, absolute height using compensated barometric pressure, and an ultra-sensitive hosted GNSS service.

“Positioning and assistance are no longer different problems to be solved by different solutions,” said John Carley, Sr. Product Manager at Rx Networks. “People expect the same location performance whether they are outdoors or in challenging indoors locations such as an underground parkade or office tower. location.io provides a full complement of integrated positioning and assistance solutions under one consistent and easy to integrate service platform.”

location.io includes technologies already in use by over 1 billion smartphones, laptops, and wearables worldwide. Specific components are:

• Real-time assistance. Previously known as GPStream GRN, location.io’s real-time assistance service supports all popular location servers such as Ericsson, TCS, NSN, ZTE, and Qualcomm. The service is also available in RINEX format or over HTTP for ease of integration. The underlying global reference network, owned and operated by Rx Networks, is highly redundant and supports five constellations: GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo, and QZSS.
• Predicted GNSS assistance. Previously known as GPStream PGPS, the predicted service provides seed data that enables client devices such as smartphones, laptops, and wearables to generate up to 14 days of extended ephemeris for fast and sensitive GNSS fixes. BeiDou and Galileo have been added to GPS and GLONASS and are currently available for chipset integration. Full quad constellation support will be available by December 31st.
• GNSS long term orbits and clocks. New to the location.io offering are high accuracy orbital and clock predictions, generated from data observed by Rx Networks’ global reference network. The service supports five constellations: GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo, and, in early 2016, QZSS.
• Wi-Fi & Cell-ID positioning. For indoor positioning and as a complement to the other location.io services, the Wi-Fi & Cell-ID positioning service is backed up by a database of over 600 million Wi-Fi access points and over 60 million cellular IDs. For customers with a GNSS chip, the service can be paired with either the real-time or predicted GNSS assistance for consistent performance indoors and out.
• Absolute height. With the increasing number of barometric pressure sensors included in smartphones and IoT devices, the absolute height service provides both sensor calibration and uses compensated barometric pressure to determine absolute height above ground level. This can help refine GNSS fixes and, most importantly, can determine the correct floor level for emergency calls.
• Ultra-sensitive GNSS receiver. This location.io service consists of highly specialized GNSS receiver algorithms deployed in powerful, cloud-based servers, The service enables IoT devices such as routers, small cells, and Bluetooth beacons to self-locate. These infrastructure devices only need to receive an occasional GNSS signal and relay it to the cloud service. Over time, the integration of multiple signal captures allows the accurate determination of a device’s location even when located deep indoors. The service is currently being tested by a major US mobile operator to help determine the location of small cells and home phone units. Initial results are approaching 100% success in locating such devices, a significant improvement over previous GNSS methods.

All location.io services are delivered from Rx Networks’ geo-redundant and cloud based service delivery network, ensuring a 99.999% service level availability.

For more information, please contact sales.rxnetworks.com, visit the Rx Networks booth at ION GNSS+ 2015, or visit rxnetworks.com.

About Rx Networks Inc.

EMPOWER YOUR LOCATION SERVICES

We are a mobile positioning technology company. We don’t do hardware, GPS or sensor chips; we don’t do mobile apps and we don’t do maps either. Yet, we empower all those who do! We develop ingenious hybrid positioning solutions that unify GNSS, Wi-Fi, cellular and sensor signals for an unmatched mobile location user experience.

Outdoor. Indoor. In 3D.

The ability to determine one’s location anywhere on Earth is truly a technological marvel of our modern age. It has enabled countless location based services, which have become so pervasive in our daily lives, that the underlying technology is rarely given any thought. So, let’s take a minute to understand the history of global navigation satellite systems, as a basis for a global reference network.

While not the first, the most recognizable global navigation satellite system (GNSS) is the Global Positioning System (GPS), a project established in 1973 by the United States Department of Defense. This network of satellites (32 today) orbit the Earth while broadcasting navigation messages toward the planet. These navigation messages are comprised of the following:

• The clock status of the satellite, as well as its individual health/status.
• Precise orbital information of the satellite, called the ephemeris.
• Coarse orbit and status information of all satellites in the constellation, called the almanac.

Despite the slow transmission rate by today’s standards (50 bit/s), these messages travel at the speed of light on the radio spectrum, reaching the surface of the planet in under 7/100ths of a second. From the ground, a receiver with line-of-sight to the satellites, performs calculations based on the reported locations of the visible satellites and determines its location via a process of trilateration and clock validation. While the applications that this technology has enabled are virtually limitless, from missile guidance to the future of self-driving cars, there are limitations to underlying technology itself.

As unimpeded line-of-sight to the overhead satellites is required in order to receive the navigation messages, getting a location fix in obstructed areas like skyscraper laden city streets can be time consuming and frustrating to the end user. To supplement traditional GNSS, a range of assistance protocols were created to improve the time to first fix (TTFF) and enhance the ongoing location experience; this is where a global reference network comes in to play.

So what is a global reference network?

• global   /ˈɡləʊb(ə)l/    Relating to the whole world; worldwide.
• reference   /ˈrɛf(ə)r(ə)ns/    The use of a source of information in order to ascertain something.
• network   /ˈnɛtwəːk/    A group or system of interconnected people or things.

With a little bit of help from our friends at the Oxford English Dictionary, a global reference network is a group of interconnected GNSS ground stations, distributed around the globe which are used to ascertain the location of GNSS satellites. In contrast to an end-user device, which uses the navigation messages to determine its own location in relation to the satellites, a ground station’s primary function is to determine the location of each satellite that it can see overhead. Given enough globally distributed ground stations, all satellites in a GNSS constellation can be observed in their orbits in real-time.

Each one of the GRN sites are capable of relaying the satellite navigation messages to centralized data centers which can be distributed to customers across a range of verticals, including chipset manufacturers, OEM’s, telecommunications providers and location based service suppliers. This data can be structured in multiple different ways, from a real-time broadcast ephemeris stream, to processed predictions known as extended ephemeris, which calculate the location of the satellites in space and time for weeks into the future.

Given that mobile devices are capable of receiving information via the data network at hundreds of thousands of times the satellite transmission rate of 50 bit/s, this assistance data can be continually updated in the background to enhance the core GNSS layer. This results in a significantly faster TTFF compared to traditional GNSS, as well as the ability to receive a location fix in obstructed environments where non-assisted devices might never be able to determine their location.

The Rx Networks global reference network is capable of supporting a range of global and regional constellations, including:

• GPS – United States
• GLONASS – Russia
• BeiDou / BeiDou-2 – China
• Galileo – European Union
• QZSS – Japan

With the data derived from the global reference network, Rx Networks offers two distinct product lines, under the GPStream banner, GRN and PGPS. GPStream GRN is offered as a real-time stream or request based broadcast ephemeris service, which is used extensively in the E-911 space. As such, the service takes advantage of multiple levels of redundancy and is backed by a carrier grade, 99.999% SLA uptime guarantee. GPStream PGPS is Rx Networks’ prediction product, which enables mobile devices to generate high accuracy extended ephemeris for weeks into the future, without the need for continual access to a data network. This empowers devices to receive significantly faster and more accurate fixes in obstructed locations while roaming or in areas without cellular coverage.

In the next issue of Points of Interest, I will be discussing the logistics of designing and deploying a global reference network, starting with the base set of requirements:

• Political stability – Is it safe to make an investment in the country which will be hosting the site?
• Power/network stability – Will the site be highly available? Can near real-time data be assured?
• Unobstructed views of the horizon – Will the site be able to see all available satellites in the sky?

Stay tuned!

One of the core principles of Rx Networks location technologies is the ability to run on any hardware platform and operating system. Products such as our XYBRID RT (cellular and WiFi location lookup service) can be as simple as a HTTP GET request, while our GPStream PGPS A-GNSS solution interfaces with a GNSS chipset, schedules download of new data, generates Extended Ephemeris (EE) from seed data or Broadcast Ephemeris (BCE), and stores data locally on the device. While we can pass the responsibility of developing all this code to the customer, it is not attractive solution for our customers or ourselves as both parties must commit additional development and support resources to complete the integration.

The smartphone market is dominated by ARM based hardware running Android and iOS, while the wearable gadgets, M2M, and PND markets have a greater diversity of hardware and OS options. Having customers in all these industries provides a development challenge; is it possible to write software that can run on such a variety of hardware and software platforms?

Part of the solution is to develop software using the C programming language. Dennis Ritchie developed the C language and C was used to implement the Unix operating system in the early 1970s at Bell Labs.

C is a function oriented low-level programming language as opposed to an object oriented language like C++ or Java. In programming abstraction C lies in between Assembly and C++. Code written in C has a smaller footprint and is more portable while C does not directly support high level abstraction concepts like polymorphism and inheritance which makes code easier to extend and reuse. It is possible to develop an application with a combination of C and C++ code, but  while a device that has a C++ compiler, will definitely have a C compiler, the opposite may not be true, this is why C code is more portable on a larger variety of hardware and software platforms than C++.

Leveraging the function oriented nature of the C language the integration software is designed as an event driven state machine. The state machine is responsible for:

1. Verifying and maintaining an accurate system time
2. Obtaining a list of cellular and WiFi access points and using XYBRID RT to obtain a location
3. Monitoring the data connectivity of the device and taking appropriate actions when a data connection is available
4. Processing downloaded data and incoming Broadcast data from a GNSS chipset, and applying the PGPS algorithm to generate up to 14 days worth of Extended Ephemeris
5. Supplying the GNSS chipset with AGNSS data to improve Time to First Fix (TTFF)

Each state has a set of procedures to verify and complete, before the state machine initiates to the next state. This allows for each possible state outcome to be unit tested and helps to ensure consistent behavior across all platforms.

The integration code has been commercially integrated on devices with hardware architectures such as ARM, MIPS and x86 and on operating systems such as Android, Linux, Windows, QNX and other proprietary OSes. Having one unified integration that runs and behaves consistently on all our customers platforms has helped to ensure a timely integration of Rx Networks location technologies while reducing the overall development and resources commitments.

In the next following articles we will cover more details of developing an event driven state machine and examples of how to structure and write hardware and OS portable code.

Rx Networks Inc., a leading mobile location technology and services company, announced today that it will, along with four European industry leaders, be developing a European-based location service offering.

The consortium of companies includes Thales Alenia Space (a key actor in the development of Galileo), Telespazio (see below), STMicroelectronics (the largest European developer of semiconductors and micro systems), and Novero (a major actor in the European machine-to-machine market).

This action is funded in part by Horizon 2020, the European Commission R&D program, which is coordinated by the European GNSS Agency (GSA). 

The new offering will provide a full suite of GNSS assistance and location services with a particular emphasis on the innovative uses of EGNOS and Galileo signals, taking advantage of Galileo signal specificities.

The service will deliver real-time Assisted-GNSS based on the SUPL 2.0 standard as well as Rx Networks’ XYBRID RT. The platform will also use XYBRID RT to offer Cell-ID/Wi-Fi positioning and chipset-independent extended ephemeris using Rx Networks’ GPStream PGPS. Multi-constellation support will include Galileo, GLONASS, and GPS with the ability to expand to other constellations as required.

With planned availability in late December 2015, the service will be one of the first commercially available Galileo assistance data services, with free developer access to foster new and innovative location applications. The service is expected to become a key enabler of European based machine-to-machine applications, including eCall, as well as public safety initiatives such as E112.

“Managed and operated within Europe, this will not only showcase Galileo technology, but also fully equip the EU with location capabilities previously only available from foreign sources,” said Yves Capelle, Head of the Space Systems and Applications Business Unit of Telespazio France. “By bringing together five companies with deep mobile positioning expertise, it will also be one of the most modern and comprehensive location enablement platforms, designed to address location-based services from social media to industrial and emergency services,” he added.

For more information, please contact Rx Networks at marketing@rxnetworks.com or visit our booth (5H75) at Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, Spain.

About Telespazio

Based in Toulouse and with offices in Paris, Bordeaux, Kourou and Libreville, Telespazio France is the French subsidiary of Telespazio, a joint venture of Finmeccanica and Thales (67%/33%) with revenues of €600 million in 2013 and 2,500 employees. Telespazio has played a pioneering role in satellite-based services and its history has been shaped by key advances and major technological breakthroughs. With the first live satellite television broadcasts in 1964, Telespazio became one of the world’s leading suppliers of telecommunications, Earth-observation and Satellite navigation solutions. Telespazio France is leveraging this culture of innovation and its expertise in latest digital technologies to develop new services with high added value, notably for the geo-information and navigation markets, as well as for media, retail, oil and gas, and defence. Telespazio France operates complex satellite systems and sustains a large number of infrastructures.

About Rx Networks Inc. 

WE EMPOWER GREAT POSITIONING. 

We are a mobile positioning technology company. We don’t do hardware, GPS or sensor chips; we don’t do mobile apps and we don’t do maps either. Yet, we empower all those who do! We develop ingenious hybrid positioning solutions that unify GNSS, Wi-Fi, cellular and sensor signals for an unmatched mobile location user experience.

Outdoor. Indoor. In 3D.