GMV’s accurate and safe positioning solution is now on the road

GMV has recently reached the milestone of incorporating its safe, high precision and reliable positioning technology onboard vehicles of the German premium car manufacturer BMW Group.

GMV’s positioning solution comprises two components: an onboard Positioning Engine software (PE) and a GNSS Correction Service (CS). The CS provides BMW Group vehicles with corrections to the Broadcast Ephemeris for different GNSS constellations, augmentation data to remove local atmospheric effects and safety-related information for computing a reliable user position. The PE integrated in the vehicles’ on-board unit also uses the corrections, together with GNSS signals and information from other sensors, to compute a trustable vehicle position, speed, and heading.

Both CS and PE have been developed, validated, and evolved over the last years in order to be able to cope with the requirements laid down by the different GNSS-based high‑ accuracy positioning markets including the automotive market. The latter has been the latest challenge taken on by GMV within its positioning solution, for which ISO 26262 (among others), the strictest automotive standards, plus the highly demanding quality practices for critical software were adopted.

In addition to the software side, GMV’s solution relies on a secure and redundant physical infrastructure. GMV owns and operates a Worldwide GNSS Station Network, which provides the GNSS raw data needed by the CS to generate the corrections. Such corrections are computed within two physically independent Data Centers, giving GMV’s solution the necessary availability levels for automated driving applications.

This production launch milestone adds automated driving functions to GMV’s positioning solution market portfolio, consolidating GMV as one of the main worldwide suppliers of GNSS‑based high‑accuracy positioning solutions.