CSR takes location to next level with SiRFstarV, SiRFusion and SiRFprimaII

Locations & Beyond Summit, SAN FRANCISCO, USA: CSR plc strengthened its leadership in the mobile and automotive location markets, announcing the launch of its next-generation SiRFstarV architecture, the SiRFprimaII SoC auto infotainment platform and the SiRFusion end-to-end location platform.

Introduced to top industry executives at the annual Locations & Beyond Summit, the new CSR offerings take location to the next level, with SiRFstarV and SiRFusion enabling exciting new products that significantly improve the user experience for a broad range of location applications used indoors and outdoors on mobile devices and SiRFprimaII significantly improving the auto navigation experience for mainstream consumers.

“Whether it’s localised search, social networking, mobile promotions or an intelligent mobile assistant, location is rapidly becoming a fundamental contextual element for delivering relevant information from the cloud to people on the go. Regardless of where people are, indoors or outdoors, in their cars or walking about, more accurate and reliable location is essential to enhance the consumer experience with a broad range of applications,” said Kanwar Chadha, chief marketing officer for CSR and founder of SiRF.

“Since 1995, our vision has been to deliver innovations that bring the benefits of location to mainstream consumers. With our SiRFstarV architecture and SiRFusion platform, we are breaking the barrier to providing a seamless location and navigation experience to consumers, both indoors and outdoors. Our SiRFprimaII auto infotainment platform is designed to enable a premium automotive navigation, entertainment and augmented reality experience that is affordable for everyone.”

SiRFstarV architecture
The SiRFstarV architecture introduces a new approach to location and navigation. Instead of relying solely on GPS to determine position, the SiRFstarV architecture gathers real-time information from GPS, Galileo, Glonass and Compass (when operational) satellites, multiple radio systems, such as cellular and Wi-Fi, and multiple MEMS sensors, like accelerometers, gyros and compasses. It then combines this real-time information with ephemeris data, mapping, cellular base station and Wi-Fi access point database information, and other cloud-based aiding information using the SiRFusion platform.

By fusing all this data, the SiRFstarV architecture is able to take location and navigation to the next level, providing precise location and navigation indoors as well as outdoors.

CSR is demonstrating the SiRFusion platform on an early implementation of the SiRFstarV architecture at the Summit.

SiRFusion
A breakthrough innovation to enhance the consumer experience with indoor and outdoor location- and navigation-enabled applications, the SiRFusion self-learning, end-to-end location platform “fuses” multiple radio signals and sensor inputs to constantly provide extremely reliable and accurate location.

Mobile products using SiRFstarV and SiRFusion will be able to make a seamless transition between outdoor and indoor navigation as people make their way through countries, cities, neighbourhoods, parks, shopping malls, convention centres, airports, train stations or other large structures while continuing to utilise a variety of location-enabled services and applications. Unlike other systems that require costly manual surveys to build and maintain a database of indoor Wi-Fi radio locations, the SiRFusion platform constantly updates its database automatically using crowdsourcing techniques.

“Our research clearly indicates that location has quickly gained traction with consumers as an essential contextual component for many of the applications they use and depend upon with their mobile devices,” said Tim Bajarin president of Creative Strategies Inc. “The SiRFusion platform will shine a bright light into what until now has been a location dead zone, and should attract a lot of attention from mobile device makers as a way to extend the usefulness of location into any indoor setting for the first time.”

SiRFprimaII
The SiRFPrimaII auto infotainment platform brings the features of premium, location-aware in-vehicle infotainment systems to the mainstream market. It integrates a multi-GNSS location engine supporting GPS, Galileo, Glonass and Compass satellites to improve the navigation system performance in obstructed environments.

Combined with SiRFDRive dead reckoning software, the SiRFprimaII delivers seamless navigation experience whether driving in dense urban canyons or through tunnels or multistory parking lots. Its powerful new 3D graphics and video accelerators, ARM Cortex-A9 application processor and other key components bring the ultimate in navigation and entertainment experiences to mainstream consumers. Its graphics and multimedia capabilities are also designed to make new concepts like augmented reality practical for the mainstream automotive market.

In-dash or on-dash, the rich multimedia, touch user interface and powerful computing capabilities of the SiRFprimaII SoC combined with CSR connectivity and audio technologies enable OEMs and ODMs to focus their limited resources on creating highly differentiated, feature-rich navigation and entertainment systems at competitive price points.