u-blox’s Andreas Thiel on Precision GNSS Trends and IoT Embracing 5G

Hello, nice to meet you.

Well, today I'm very pleased to talk about two solutions to two big issues we see. On the positioning side, we're bringing centimeter-level accuracy to the broad market, which we call democratizing high precision. On the cellular side, the big trend is satellite-based communications, especially in industrial IoT where customers need coverage where terrestrial cellular is not present. So we're backing up terrestrial connections with satellite ones. Those are the big trends.

Being in this business for over 25 years, it's been an interesting journey. We've often thought satellite-based positioning had reached its natural end, but another step always appeared. Twenty-five years ago, a GPS receiver was only on airplanes or expensive equipment. Then it proliferated into mobile phones and automotive navigation with TomTom. Now it's in every car and smartphone. That was a first step, bringing satellite positioning to the masses, but at meter-level accuracy. A new field opened when we brought our F9 product to market about five years ago.

F9 was our first multi-frequency product, enabling decimeter accuracy in certain environments. The big step was bringing technology that was previously limited to precision agriculture and construction at very high price points, down to a level that works for lawnmowers, scooters, and autonomous robots. It also sparked interest from the automotive industry. However, F9 still requires correction services like Point Perfect, which offer regional coverage. With our new X20 technology, we make centimeter-level accuracy available globally and simplify things by accessing correction data via L-band directly from satellites. It's a subscription service but works out of the box without worrying about specific subscriptions or regional performance.

Exactly, we launched it at Intergeo a week ago. It's already with first customers testing it. So that's the next big thing in our high-precision GNSS roadmap.

The main drivers are automotive – for all kinds of assistance driving systems, not necessarily fully autonomous but ADAS Level 2 or 2+. They need lane accuracy, about half a meter, reliable decimeter accuracy. We see increasing demand for better than standard GNSS. We have a full roadmap from standard precision up to high precision with service offerings, and at the very high end, for autonomous driving, we can offer a safety-certified solution. In the past, GNSS was used for navigation and emergency calls; now it's being integrated into driving assistance functions to understand which lane you're in.

The important part is not absolute precision but global coverage. What makes life easier for customers is that in the past they had to consider different continents, services, and subscriptions. Now we can say there is a basic layer of service that gives centimeter accuracy globally. Companies like Stellantis or General Motors can do one model for all territories. With F9, the hardware was the same but you still had to think about each location, especially corner cases like China – a very important market but locally managed. The X20 offers a global PPP service that helps, or they can use local services for China and another provider for the rest of the world.

With this product, we are absolutely best in class in all dimensions. We don't just say multiband; we say all-band. All satellite systems are supported, plus the L-band channel for correction signals from Inmarsat. It uses all available satellite signals for the best location. Power consumption is very low for the performance level, and it's a single die – one chip does it all. It's a breakthrough product delivering everything for this kind of application. If you push the envelope more toward precision in agriculture or construction, global PPP services provide global coverage but may not deliver ultimate precision in every location. For that, you go to RTK services, which X20 supports, enabling centimeter precision in locations where such services are provided. This platform gives full flexibility to adapt to precision and coverage needs.

We have a strong foothold in industrial IoT – tracking goods, containers, trains – that's the core of our cellular business. There's always a need to extend coverage because networks are optimized for people, but IoT devices are often in places without coverage, like containers on the ocean or animal tracking in rural areas. Our R5 platform supports various satellite technologies. We teamed up with Iridium and have a product that supports Iridium satellite connectivity as a fallback. That's an established infrastructure. We also announced a product that supports the 3GPP standard for satellite communication (NTN), part of Release 17. We're working with Skylo to ensure our modem works with early NTN deployments. So that's an offering for customers who want to work on the growing NTN ecosystem.

On the cellular side, the question is when IoT will fully embrace 5G. Cat-M and NB-IoT are already 5G standards, but we're looking at RedCap – reduced capability in 5G Release 17 – to become a commercially viable product for IoT. The challenge is to reduce hardware cost like LTE did. On the positioning side, we're excited about applications like autonomous lawnmowers. We're enabling high precision with low power consumption that might even make it viable for consumer smartphones. That would be another shift. Finally, the most unusual application I've seen is dropping GNSS sensors into tornadoes from aircraft to analyze them from the inside. The log files show amazing dynamics in three dimensions.

Yeah, I think from the scientists, it's one of those unusual applications. Just imagine the drones we use today to take pictures – that was very unusual 10 years ago, and now everyone has one.

Thank you, it was a pleasure talking to you.