Tags: GPS, Microsoft
Publication: TheVerge.com
Publication Date: 12/24/2012

Image credit: NCReedplayer

A new technology being developed by Microsoft Research could lower the high GPS power requirements. According to reports, Cloud-Offloaded GPS (CO-GPS) would cut GPS power requirements by 99 percent by transferring most of the work associated with calculating a precise location to the cloud.

Microsoft Research has found that using CO-GPS would allow for constant sensing with one measurement per second granularity for one year and a half using only two AA batteries. Additionally, CO-GPS works much faster than the current GPS; what would normally take a smartphone 30 seconds to calculate its precise location, takes only milliseconds for the new system.

The research team expects that this important improvement in GPS efficiency will spark a new wave of services based on continuous GPS logging that integrate different layers of data. These services could range from a database of noise pollution levels in a specific city to getting custom directions based on the routs you take the most.

To test the CO-GPS, Microsoft Research is also developing CLEO, a new mobile sensing platform. The research findings have been published in the 10th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems.

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