Panel: Location Creation:

Laurie Lamberth, founder and vice president of business development at Laurie Lamberth and Associates, moderated “Location Creation,” a panel about location technologies for smartphones and other mobile devices, including enhancements to satellite-based positioning as well as techniques for high-precision outdoor location and the new varied approaches for indoor positioning.

Panel:  Location Services 2.0:

Steve Augustino, partner at Kelley, Drye and Warren, moderated “Location Services 2.0,” a panel designed to explore the next step in the LBS ecosystem: once position is determined, what can be done with the resulting data, how to manage privacy, how LBS can and should be architected, provisioned and delivered for various use cases, and innovative new applications that can utilise location technology for user satisfaction and business profitability.

RapidFire/FastPitch:

In past years, one of the most popular elements of the Summit has been the Fast-Pitch sessions – this year, called “Rapid Fire” – in which companies present their new location-based offerings. This year’s sessions – five minutes each – was moderated by Paul Asel, managing partner of Nokia Growth Partners. Companies presenting included Urban Airship, Locaid Technologies, InvisiTrak, Pole Star USA, Mosaik Solutions, and Alohar Mobile.  The winner was Locaid Technologies, Inc., the world’s largest mobile location data gateway.  Detailed information is forthcoming in a press release.

Joep van Beurden, CEO of CSR, had a “fireside chat” with Derek Kerton, principal analyst at The Kerton Group, an analyst firm, to discuss the state of CSR and what’s on the drawing board.  Here are excerpts:

Update on the Samsung transaction:   CSR exclusively licensed its handset location and connectivity technology to Samsung earlier this year; it was not a sale, per se.  We did not agree to restrictions on location.

Location is among our top priorities; four other markets of high importance to us are voice, music, imaging, and automotive – segments in which we can occupy a #1 or #2 market share position.

History of location services at CSR:

Outdoor location took a long time to take off.  You needed hardware to get location info; SiRF was the pioneer there (SiRF is now part of CSR).    We now see the explosion in growth will come from indoor location – many applications will be far more useful if there’s a seamless transition from outdoor to indoor – and we feel we have the market-leading platform in SiRFstarV, announced at the Locations & Beyond summit a year ago.

SiRFstarV represents a “hybrid” approach combining GPS and other GNSS signals with WiFi/cellular signals, dead reckoning, sensors, and more.

Andreas Winckler, senior advanced technology engineer, BMW Group Technology Office, delivered the keynote address for the Summit.   He discussed the widespread adoption of advanced driver assistance systems and corresponding factors:  the exploding volume of data generated by vehicle sensors, and how to tap this data to make cars more convenient and safer.  Andreas concurs with Roger Lanctot’s assessment about the smartphone taking over the automotive LBS market.

BMW and other automotive manufacturers are now deploying a wide variety of sensors, GPS technology, gyro, dead reckoning, and others to provide greater availability and accuracy, even in urban canyons and under dense foliage.   There are multiple sensors today in automobiles to gauge air pressure, rain, light, and more; by collecting this data and uploading it to the cloud, many innovative things can be accomplished.

Andreas observed that future location-based applications will be based on self-learning and crowd-sourced data; for example:

• Learning speed limits detected by cameras for efficient speed recommendation
• Learning curvature by wheels sensors, gyros for safe and efficient curve speed recommendation
• Learning driver profile for route prediction and personalized re-fuel recommendation

CSR, in conjunction with the Telecom Council, is today hosting the 6th annual Locations & Beyond Summit at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Palo Alto, California, bringing together leaders in the location ecosystem with the aim of working together to tap the enormous potential for location services.

In his Analyst Overview, Roger Lanctot of Strategy Analytics provided an Analyst Overview in which he declared that smartphone connectivity is the new frontier in the car.
“The iPod/iPad are transforming the design of the car, much to the consternation of auto manufacturers,” Lanctot said. “But several auto manufacturers are embracing these platforms, and finding that doing so helps sell cars – as contrasted to simply putting modems into cars.”
Who’s doing it right? Lanctot cited BMW, Ford and GM, all of whom have scalable, consistent platforms worldwide.
Other observations:
• Android IS coming into the car, especially in China.
• A plethora of new, location-aware social networking applications are being developed.
• The industry is in transition as players try to figure out how to connect smartphones safely and easily. Manufacturers who focus on this will sell cars.

Back in October we were shortlisted for a prestigious IET Innovation Awards in the ‘Embedded and Critical Systems’ category for our submission on our innovative location technology solutions – the SiRFusion™ platform and SiRFstarV™ location architecture.

The SiRFusion™ platform and SiRFstarV™ architecture have introduced 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 satellites, multiple radio systems, such as Wi-Fi® and cellular, and multiple MEMS sensors, like accelerometers, gyros and compasses. SiRFusion™ can then combine this real-time information with cellular base station and Wi-Fi access point location data, ephemeris data and other cloud-based aiding information from the CSR Positioning Center (CPC) to generate accurate and reliable position updates.

The judges shortlisted SiRFstarV™ and SiRFusion™ for its high availability and accuracy for positioning and navigation outdoors, in urban canyons, and indoors in shopping centres, airports, convention centres, and other pedestrian areas, extending the availability and reliability of popular LBS (Location Based Services) applications like mapping, searching, finding, tracking, and navigating.

The award ceremony was held last Thursday at The Brewery in London and was attended by our own Stephen Goodwin, Head of Research and Innovation and Dr N Graube, Fellow, Advanced Location Algorithms (pictured). It was a great night where the engineering community came out in force to celebrate its success. There was some excellent, forward-thinking work in many different verticals shortlisted and we were very proud to be featured as one of the nation’s leading technological innovators.

You can find more information on the SiRFusion™ platform and SiRFstarV™ location architecture here: http://www.csr.com/products/138/sirfstarv-architecture-and-sirfusion-platform

Compliance training may not sound thrilling but in the modern world it can be crucial. So it is with the compliance challenge of the 2010 Bribery Act. Compliance with the Act is an absolute necessity. Achieving this for a complex, rapidly changing global company in a rapidly changing world is challenging. One of the most significant features of CSR’s response to the Act is the use of online learning.

We first looked at using online learning some time ago but the appearance of the 2010 Bribery Act provided an ideal opportunity to use it widely. Last week one of the leading bodies in the field recognised the quality of the online programme that had been deployed by CSR working with global compliance consultancy SAI Global.The award was for excellence in using online learning for compliance purposes. Read the SAI Press release here

To achieve compliance with the Bribery Act we needed to equip people to make the right decisions and take the right course of action in a wide variety of situations.  We did this by using realistic, interactive scenarios, scripted to meet individual employee circumstances according to job roles and functions throughout CSR. CSR managers played a vital role in shaping these scenarios. The judges acknowledged the way in which we focused individuals on what mattered most for them.
As a result we achieved high levels of user uptake, disproving the theory that compliance training is necessarily dull and a bit of a chore!

To receive a leading national award for something as important and challenging as this is very rewarding.  I thought we might win but you never quite know what the competition will come up with!

As a result we have learned a lot about how to make online learning effective.  In the future it will play an increasingly important role in the company’s drive to equip our employees with the knowledge and capabilities needed to perform their roles effectively and appropriately.  The award shows us that we are on the right track!

Kindly provided by

Ian Purdie
Learning and Development Manager

Held at the heart of Germany’s motor city, Telematics Update Munich is one of the key conferences and exhibitions which attracts participants from leading vehicle manufactures and tier one suppliers. It is also the perfect occasion to showcase CSR’s latest technologies and to generate market traction. For the event this year, CSR prepared a number of demonstrations, all of which can be viewed on our YouTube channel.

The demand for Wi-Fi® connectivity continues apace for in-vehicle infotainment systems (IVI). Wi-Fi® makes it easier to share HD videos, on the internet or stored, amongst IVI systems and enables the assortment of mobile devices people bring into a car.

At Telematics, we demonstrated CSR’s latest automotive Wi-Fi® chipset, CSR6030A11™ hosted on SiRFprimaII™ platform. The new chipset enables the next generation in-vehicle Wi-Fi® use cases such as Wi-Fi® Direct, enabling simple peer-to-peer connection, and concurrent Access Point/Client operation – effectively turning the IVI system into an wireless router sharing internet connection from tethered to mobile phone. Visitors to our booth agreed that, whether it is internet browsing or video streaming, our set-up delivered smooth connection to a tablet PC or a mobile phone.

On the topic of high quality entertainment, we have also set up atpX® audio streaming over Bluetooth®. Different from previous demonstrations, or that of the competition, we showed audio streaming from one SiRFprimaII™ platform to three headsets, each with its own audio stream. The solution offers significant cost advantage to OEMs offering individualised IVI system to all vehicle passengers. Moreover, aptX® offers ultra low latency, enables lip-sync audio watching video and near real-time sound effect when playing games. Participants who tried our solution were thoroughly impressed and immediately saw its value.

Bluetooth® SMART continues to make its way into the automotive market. Prepared by CSR China team, CSR demonstrated the first Tyre Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS) – a system which continuously monitors and reports tyre temperature and pressures, and gives a warning to driver when the tyres are flat. The sensor units of the system is based on the CSR1000™ single-mode Bluetooth® SMART chip transmitting sensor data to the monitor unit, which is based on SiRFatlasVI™ platform running on WindowCE. The advantages of the Bluetooth® SMART based system includes the use of global standard 2.4GHZ ISM band radio as well as the very low power consumption. The demonstration that included a pressure chamber and foot pump intrigued our visitors who came to our booth to have a go with the pressure sensors.

Last but not the least, CSR showed off its new SiRFstarV™ chip-set which is capable of tracking, simultaneously, multiple satellite constellations including GPS and GLONASS, as well as Galileo and Compass. SiRFstarV™ is able to improve accuracy, reduce time-to-first-fix (TTFF), and possess superior immunity against interference from LTE, Bluetooth®, or path-loss in an urban jungle. SiRFStarV™ attracted good attention from audience across the board and many people came to our booth for in-depth discussions.

In summary, the interaction with attendees at Telematics was excellent. Our attendance certainly generated strong interest. I am very thankful to the Communications team and CSR’s Ingolstadt team for planning and organising the event. Thank you also to everyone who worked so hard on the demonstration kits to show off the best of CSR.

Kind regards

Jimmy Pai
Technical Marketing Manager

CSR’s Greg Turetzky attended the International Committee conference in Bejing, China this week. The conference was sponsored by the UN OOSA (Office of Outer Space Affairs) and is the only international forum specifically created for the cooperation of the GNSS providers and interaction with GNSS users. It is regularly attended by the US for GPS, Russia for GLONASS, EU for Galileo, China for COMPASS and Japan for QZSS. This year’s conference was focused on the coming generation of GNSS satellites targeted for 2016, as each system already has its current system fully defined and deployed (although Galileo is just a little behind in deployment). Greg gave a short presentation on CSR’s plans for indoor navigation based on SiRFusion^TM and our desired improvements in the next generation of GNSS satellites.
There was a lot of discussion about combining frequency bands in L1 or supporting multiple bands at different frequencies. The group was also treated to a tour of the COMPASS monitoring station (see the picture with this article), which was quite impressive.  Greg is now after a screen like that in his house for movies!

The convention opened at nine in the morning with an interesting panel session on “DSP for Mobile Devices”, which looked at the state-of-the-art and future trends for digital signal processing for phones and tablets. It’s becoming clear that next-generation mobile devices will conduct all manner of clever processing to compensate for small form factor, tiny inefficient speakers and noisy environments. Following this was a workshop on how we might standardize the quality of spatial audio and attach some measure of performance to audio that’s designed to envelope and immerse the listener. This is quite a difficult metric to measure and the workshop panellists discussed some innovative notions on how quite subjective human assessments of where audio sounds like it’s coming from can be turned into a scientific measurement of how accurately an audio system is working.

The day finished up with a panel session on error-tolerant audio coding, chaired by CSR. Four panelists discussed their particular views and research in this increasingly-relevant area and a good audience went the extra mile to stay on into the evening to debate the finer points.

You can access the slides from ‘Error Tolerant Coding Workshop’ here

Kindly provided by

David Trainor
Director of Advanced Audio Research

The Telecom Council Forum was held at CSR Sunnyvale on 25th October 2012.  As usual, the forum was well attended by industry leading telecom operators as well as telecom ecosystem vendors and partners. Among the keynote speakers was Stephen Bye, the CTO of Sprint and host of panelist from marquee companies like Cisco, T-Mobile and many others.

The topic of the day was ‘The Mobile Enterprise’ and there was some fascinating discussions about the future of the mobile technologies and the way that companies will use mobile devices. Mobile technologies certainly have come a long way in a relatively short time. Just looking at the cell/smart phone evolution, we have seen capabilities evolve from being simple voice communications devices to complete internet capable multi faceted machines. One of the questions is where are these machines going to go into the future.

Clearly no one doubts that mobile devices of all kinds will continue to integrate more powerful processors and include more sensors than ever before. This means that the future of mobile devices will become much more contextually aware and predictive. The possibilities are endless of how this will manifest. Some simple examples include the shopper that is not only guided to the product he or she is seeking but also provided recommendations and reviews on what products to buy and even initiate aisle level check out. Another example includes a mobile device which monitors your schedule and alerts you to take off early due to bad traffic on the roads and even provides alternative routes to get to your meeting on time.

Security is a huge concern as well and was a recurring discussion throughout the day- starting with a keynote address by Mobile Iron a well know mobile device management company. Many people spoke about how to resolve the fact that the consumerisation of mobile devices are typically used for both private and company data and interaction. Companies are looking at separation mechanisms and containerisation for enterprise apps that are kept separate from private applications. Security concerns have to be weighed against accessibility – people have to have access to the information necessary to do their jobs. There will always be some level of tension on this front. One point that was raised several times is that security will also have to be much more dynamic and flexible. Also, the ability to make use of contextual data will be useful to in mobile enterprise systems. This is one areas CSR has the potential to make some significant contribution through its locations as a service offering. Location based authentication coupled with biometric data can serve as useful method to authenticate and give access to certain capabilities and transactions. Looking forward, as locations as a service expands further into the retail space – the topic of mobile payments and security will offer new opportunities for CSR to provide valuable solutions to this nascent industry.

Security and privacy are also closely related. Stephen Bye the CTO of Sprint pointed out just how careful operators have to be with private data. He explained that operators have an enormous amount of personal/private data on individuals including all communications data, connections, locations etc. Not only is the data extremely sensitive – it has to be protected. Operators have to be extremely careful not to make use of this data in a way that might destroy public trust. Our rush to embrace all kinds of people tracking and behavior for marketing purposes will have to consider the importance of protecting individual privacy and the protecting the public trust.

Stephen also gave start ups and technology innovators some useful advice. He pointed out that big operators move very slowly to adopt change and innovation. He pointed out that Sprint has already finalised its Opex budget for 2013 – making changes now would require moving mountains. He encouraged innovators to make use of mobile applications marketplaces as a way to introduce new capabilities and technologies in order to bypass operator bureaucracy and glacial reaction time.

Enterprises of tomorrow are also changing in a radical fashion. In the past our enterprises favoured organisations that produced silos along functions. For example, sales people worked in the sales office and shared sales information. This was completely separate from engineering and so on. In tomorrow’s knowledge based enterprises – there will be much more emphasis and need arm workers with information dynamically and in accordance to ever changing needs. “Enterprise Wisdom” needs to be put in the hands of people who will need it. Mobile systems will need to keep up – security and access systems will also need to be fluid and changing according to need and context. The mining of knowledge will also evolve in the mobile enterprise. A simple example is the use of smart devices by sales people. The sales person’s contacts, meetings dates, sales reports, movement between customer sites, analysis of contextual information (for example – Petes sales peak at 10am on Thursdays and are at a minimum on Mondays at 3pm) – are all extremely valuable knowledge for the enterprise that will need to be recorded and protected. This is an example of wisdom mining and the development of knowledge in a mobile environment.

CSR is in a good position to capitalise on many aspects Mobile Enterprise from supplying locations based services such as geo-fencing, location based authentication to enabling innovation for mobile payments. New uses of Bluetooth® SMART to create local and moving geo-fencing as well as other services for use hospitals, factories and other applications will also support innovations in mobile enterprise. While CSR does not have an explicit security business today – the enablement of new security capabilities for our devices and platforms will definitely provide strategic advantage as we look across many aspects of the new mobile enterprise – especially as this enterprise also colludes and starts to emerge with a virtualization of our physical world through internet of things (IOT) and the automation of our homes and businesses.

Kindly provided by

Anthony Simon
VP Technology Strategy & Business Development