Qualcomm Technologies are looking forward to releasing chipsets for mobile phones that support India’s very own Navigation System, NavIC, after consultation with ISRO. Similar to the US’s Global Positioning System or GPS, the NavIC technology will be used in the upcoming mobile phones. This is particularly for the Indian market to enhance the geolocation capabilities of regular smartphones.
The Indian Space Research Organisation provided Qualcomm access to useful resources and helped enable NavIC capability in their Snapdragon mobile chipsets. Now, the OEMs for the upcoming smartphones can have Qualcomm processors built in the handsets. This is to enable this NavIC feature in the mobile devices manufactured and released by them.
The Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System – NavIC
The Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System goes by its operational name NavIC named after the Indian fishermen and navigators. It consists of a constellation of seven satellites and two more satellites on the ground as stand-by.
The IRNSS happens to cover entire India along with some parts of its surroundings extending its coverage region up to 1500 km around it. ISRO actually plans on extending this coverage region by increasing its constellation satellite size to 11. The current functional satellites are 9, with two on-ground ones.
A really good fact about IRNSS is that it is, in many ways, considered better than America’s navigation system. It provides real-time positioning and precise timing services. So that way, our NavIC is any day superior and more accurate than the GPS.
NavIC enabled Snapdragon Chipsets by Qualcomm
The popular chipmaker Qualcomm with assistance from ISRO developed and tested in selected chipset platforms to enable this NavIC feature in their processors. So, after including this to their new chipsets, Qualcomm strategizes to sell their chipsets and processors to leading OEMs. This way it will incorporate NavIC in the forthcoming manufactured smartphones.
NavIC is now expected to be a standard feature in mobile phones and is looking to take over future smartphones in India. In fact, the very popular Chinese smartphone manufacturing company Xiaomi, which currently owns a major part of the Indian market, is most likely to release a couple of mid-range handsets. All of them will include this NavIC receiver system by the end of this year.
How this can be useful in Automotive and IoT platforms
This idea of incorporating the NavIC facility can turn out to be exceptionally helpful in improving the geological capabilities of mobile, automotive. Along with this, it will also target the Internet of Things (IoT) solutions within the Indian regions.
With the use of engineering talent, this facility can be accelerated at a greater rate. The solution is majorly built on Qualcomm Technologies’ foundational inventions that are considered to be leading names.
In the current times, they are part of the areas of location-based position technology. As a part of the updated platforms, the Qualcomm Location Suite supports all 7 satellites. The sole intention is to render faster TTFF position acquisition and better location services.
