European GPS Competitor Galileo To Be Demonstrated At CeBit

Thalwil (Switzerland) - U-Blox, a Switzerland-based developer of GPS receivers, said that it has developed one of the first Galileo tracking devices.

The company said that it will be demonstrating its U-Blox 5 chip, a device that combines A-GPS and Galileo receiver capabilities, at CeBit, which will open its doors on March 4. The company claims that the hybrid chip in fact is able to simultaneoulsy track GPS and Galileo satellites to calculate its position. Especially the addition of Galileo will provide "better coverage, higher positioning accuracy, better multipath mitigation as well as higher overall reliability and availability," the company said.

Additionally, U-Blox claims that the chip is the fastest positioning engine made to date, with "time-to-first-fix" of about 1 second. The GPS-only U-Blox 5 is available now.

Unfortunately, it will take some time until we can take advantage of Galileo's capabilities: The system is still being built up and all 30 satellites are expected to be operational not before 2013.