Posted on Friday, April 27, 2007 2:40 PM
Start-up company BlueSky Positioning has developed location technology which will help mobile operators meet new EU emergency call legislation. BlueSky Positioning has developed patent-pending technology and processes to embed assisted global positioning system (A-GPS) capability in the SIM card (USIM in the case of 3G handsets) with minimal impact on signal strength and battery life.
BlueSky technology provides the opportunity to deploy legally-mandated positioning capability across all mobile handsets where operators need only replace the SIM cards and not the phones themselves.
source; telecompaper.com
When it comes to picking up the GPS signal Blue Sky Positioning had a novel approach: "Most antennas are designed in free space, to have nothing around them. We started out knowing that there would be metal all around us. That's our secret - how the antenna works, but when we take away the battery, take the SIM out of the phone, the signal is no longer there."
The SIM is of standard size and shape, though wouldn't pass the full ISO tests for flexibility and robustness.
While we may be dismissive of increasing the memory on a SIM, or adding cryptography for banking, we can't ignore the potential of adding a GPS capability to any handset simply by replacing the SIM.
Very low-end handsets only display text menus from the SIM, so location-based services would be limited to applications such as asking for the location of the nearest pizza parlour and receiving a response over SMS.
Slightly more expensive handsets let the SIM trigger the handset browser with a specific URL. GPS on the SIM would enable it to request information from websites based on its current location.
Handsets supporting JSR177 (enabling Java applications to talk to the SIM), or those using open operating systems such as Windows Mobile and Symbian, could support the full mapping, location, and route-planning capabilities already familiar in dedicated GPS devices.
source: reghardware.co.uk