April 25, 2004

By: Marcell Novak
Website: http://www.handheld-gps-reviews.com

SiRF’s GPS Technology Powers DeLorme’s New Earthmate GPS Receiver

SiRF Technology, Inc. announced today that its SiRFstarIIe/LP global positioning system technology is at the heart of the new Earthmate portable navigation device by DeLorme, the nation’s leading map publishing company. Earthmate uses the SiRFstar IIe/LP chipset, which now includes SiRF’s new Adaptive TricklePower feature, to deliver the highest degree of navigation accuracy and performance at the minimum power consumption, resulting in far longer battery life.

Earthmate: Accurate Navigation with Minimal Battery Power Earthmate, shipping now, is a versatile GPS receiver that adds sophisticated location and navigation capabilities to personal digital assistants and mobile computers directly from a USB port, requiring no additional batteries. It comes with DeLorme’s newly updated Street Atlas USA 2003 mapping software to provide accurate navigation for applications ranging from personal direction-finding to in-vehicle tracking.

Earthmate provides highly accurate location information because of the accuracy of the underlying SiRFstarIIe/LP chipset, and because it supports the federal government’s wide area augmentation system to improve the accuracy of GPS signals by up to five times, to within three meters. The product SiRF’s GPS Technology Powers DeLorme’s New Earthmate GPS Receiver provides position information in less than 45 seconds within powering up, and requires 75% less power to operate than comparable GPS devices.

As PDAs explode in popularity and functionality – bigger CPUs, color screens, support for voice commands – they can also serve as personal, portable navigation systems in the car, on a hike, or anywhere, says Kanwar Chadha, SiRF founder and vice president of business development. DeLorme has done an excellent job producing a GPS device with the attributes consumers really want, such as a compact size, extremely good performance, and long battery life.

Adaptive TricklePower Further Reduces Power Consumption The SiRFstarIIe/LP, introduced in 2002, offers dramatic power efficiency, highperformance and impressive design tools for longer battery life, quick time to first fixes, and faster integration of GPS location technology into consumer devices such as cell phones and mobile computer accessories. SiRFstarIIe/LP’s Adaptive TricklePower feature, an advanced power management technology that reduces power consumption by remaining in low-power mode in strong GPS signal areas, is ideal for DeLorme’s Earthmate application.

Adaptive TricklePower also features intelligent switches to full-power mode when the signal is weak, such as in severe urban canyons, which allows applications such as Earthmate to get the best performance at the lowest power use. For further power reduction, Earthmate uses SiRF’s popular Push-to-Fix feature, which reduces average power consumption to only a few milliwatts.

Our goal in developing Earthmate was to offer consumers the very best in accuracy and signal sensitivity, along with very efficient power usage to minimize battery drain all in a very compact size, according to Dave Eshelman, DeLorme senior vice president. SiRF provided the technology we needed to achieve our quality and performance goals. The company has earned a reputation as the leader in providing GPS innovation and performance, and for driving GPS into the mainstream. For more information, on the latest GPS News see gps navagation.

Author Notes:

Marcell Novak contributes and publishes news editorial to http://www.handheld-gps-reviews.com.  A wealth of information about Global Positioning Systems for commercial or personal use.