Ever wonder how that GPS chip in your cell phone or personal navigation device or some other gizmo used by your field workers actually knows how to find the orbiting satellites and grab their positioning data?

It has to hunt for them, and that's where a number of frustrating GPS problems lie. To solve them, a group of service providers, including U.S. silicon vendor Broadcom, are using different techniques to augment the basic GPS satellite system.

SAVANNAH, Ga., Sept. 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Trimble (Nasdaq: TRMB) and Saab TransponderTech AB announced today they are cooperating to integrate their differential GPS (DGPS) solutions for enhanced marine navigation.

The announcement was made today at the ION GNSS 2008 Conference.

Saab and Trimble will integrate their marine navigation solutions to deliver DGPS error correction messages to ships at sea through automatic identification system (AIS) coast stations and networks. The DGPS messages transmitted on AIS frequencies will augment the existing marine DGPS broadcasts from coastal beacon stations.

CALGARY, Sept. 8 /CNW/ - (TSX: HEM) Today, Hemisphere GPS, a leading designer and manufacturer of advanced GPS products introduced its enhanced Eclipse dual-frequency GPS receiver. The Eclipse receiver now supports USB communication and enables data logging to standard external USB flash drives. It also now utilizes an expanded number of standard RTK (Real-Time Kinematic) message formats, such as RTCM v3, CMR, and CMR+, making the Eclipse receiver compatible with CORS (Continuously Operating Reference Stations) and other RTK base station networks.

From the perspective of consumers, the yearlong rise in commodity prices from oil and natural gas to corn and wheat has clouded the economic outlook. But for producers, including many GNSS manufacturers and service providers, those clouds have silver linings.

"In order to reach centimeter and even millimeter accuracy, GPS technology is stretched to its limits by using dual frequency, Differential GPS (dGPS) and Real Time Kinematic (RTK)-based receivers combined with correction signals to compensate for atmospheric and timing errors. GPS is often complemented by other technologies such as sonar, radar, radio, laser, or optical systems"...

The Boeing Company has received a three-year, $153.5-million cost-plus-fixed-fee contract to continue its efforts to augment GPS for military applications by exploiting the Iridium low earth orbit (LEO) communications satellite system.

Trimble Navigation, Ltd. today introduced a significant advancement in high-accuracy, in-the-field mapping with its new Trimble(R) VRS Now(TM) H-Star(TM) service. This revolutionary service provides instant access to H-Star corrections throughout Germany, Great Britain, and the Madrid region of Spain. A subscription to the Trimble VRS Now H-Star service gives users working in utilities, local government, natural resources, and land management the ability to obtain real-time, decimeter level accurate positions consistently and directly at the job site.