TI's SimpleLink GPS CC4000 brings GPS capabilities to MCU-based apps

DALLAS, USA: Adding to the family of easy-to-use SimpleLink connectivity solutions, Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) introduced the SimpleLink GPS CC4000 solution—the company's first broadly available GPS solution. The self-contained module minimizes complexity synonymous with adding GPS functionality to products.

For example, the push-to-fix function is hardware-controlled through a single general purpose input and output (GPIO); simply switch on the GPIO to receive National Marena Electronics Association (NMEA) strings containing location, time and velocity information. The SimpleLink GPS CC4000 solution operates with any microcontroller (MCU) or microprocessor (MPU) while sporting an aggressive, sub-100mm2 form factor.

As a result, a wide range of customers gain the ultimate flexibility when designing GPS-based applications such as asset tracking, industrial M2M, sports and fitness, and precision timing.

"TI's GPS technology has shipped in hundreds of millions of smartphones and portable navigation devices over the past 10 years," said Eran Sandhaus, general manager, embedded connectivity solutions, TI. "As part of our SimpleLink family strategy, we are excited to offer the SimpleLink GPS CC4000 solution for embedded microcontroller applications, an easy to attach, self-contained GPS solution that is cost- and size-effective and requires little to no RF expertise."

The SimpleLink GPS CC4000 delivers better than 2.5 meter accuracy and pulse-per-second output functions to provide precise location and timing data. Its "watchful-eye" feature optimally uses the solution memory for automatic reuse of previously decoded satellite information to deliver ultra-fast time to first fix (TTFF) and optimization of the overall system power consumption.

These features and more support the movement of navigation and location based services into non-traditional GPS-enabled devices that can make use of location, time and velocity data. Additionally, the SimpleLink GPS CC4000 expands into many popular applications such as asset tracking, material exploration and sports and fitness stat monitoring and new markets driven by GPS-enabled precise timing data.

The hyper-precise timing capabilities driven by the SimpleLink GPS CC4000 solution also open up a wealth of power-efficient MCU-based use case possibilities, creating compelling end experiences. For example, highly-accurate scheduling can kick-off a marketing campaign by displaying event messages on multiple electronic signs at one specified time.

For applications requiring time-stamped records such as banking systems or the recording industrial system failures, the exact time can be recorded down to a fraction of a micro-second. The possibilities are endless.