Alec Makdessian
Alec Makdessian has 20 years of experience in the semiconductor industry and has held several roles including an Application Engineer, Marketing Engineer, Business Manager, Director, and Executive Director. His technical experience spans the areas of RF, data conversion, sensors, current sensing, temperature sensing, and LED lighting. Alec holds a BSEE and an MSEE degree from the University of Texas at Austin.
One of the biggest challenges in adding GPS technology to battery-powered devices such as emerging asset tracking and IoT applications is the short battery life. To reduce power consumption, most designs keep the receiver off until its position is required.
As the receiver wakes up, it acquires and locks onto the satellite signal, extracts the navigation message and determines position and time. However, the receiver must be powered on for more than 26 seconds to receive broadcast data.
But in a snapshot receiver implementation, the receiver is not on long enough to receive and decode the ephemeris data. Instead, ephemeris data is pre-loaded into the receiver, allowing it to wake up and report its position within 2-3 seconds. This can extend the battery life, making it well-suited for applications where battery life has been a barrier to adoption of GPS technology.
In this on-demand webinar, Maxim Integrated, now part of Analog Devices, will present an ultra-low power GPS solution as well as power management techniques to increase the battery life 10-fold.
