By David Ponce
A lot of you are probably going to say things like “This will only make it easier for the goverment to track me!”, or “My wife will always know where I am!!” Fear not. While it may be the world’s smallest GPS receiver, this little marvel by New Zealand based Rakon still has to be paired up with an ostensibly larger transmitter for anyone to be able to “track” you.
As small as a baby’s fingernail, this chip is meant to be integrated into other manufacturer’s devices, surely satisfying them in their miniaturization efforts. It is even sensitive enough to pick up weak signals.
All GPS receivers use quartz crystals in the decoding of satellite positioning data by oscillating at very specific frequencies; 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.
[Rakon’s Press Release] VIA [HipTechBlog]
