Rakon Develops Tiny GPS Receiver

January 13, 2006: Watch out for positioning functionality in future cameras, mobile phones and wristwatches, thanks to a new ultra-small GPS module developed by New Zealand company, Rakon.

The chip, which is the size of a baby’s fingernail, is claimed as the world’s smallest and contains a tiny ‘plug and play’ radio receiver. Rakon says it will be “uniquely simple” for manufacturers ” to imbed the product” in their own new devices. The company also claims its new GPS module has “high sensitivity … that can enable quite weak signals to be received, which is a real breakthrough in an industry that needs to have products that will function in urban environments with very high interference”. Further development of the product is expected to produce a module with up to three times greater sensitivity, “even before the first development is out the door”.

All GPS receivers use quartz crystals, which oscillate at very specific frequencies in the decoding of satellite positioning data. Rakon was the first to develop temperature-controlled crystal oscillators that were small, inexpensive and yet still precise enough under the dynamic temperature changes that GPS systems experience. The company recently hit record production numbers of near three million units a month from its Auckland factory and expects this to triple in 2006 as new products are released. For more information, visit www.rakon.com.