It seems that not a day goes by without talking about one or two patents of the Apple company. Now I have a patent for you that speaks about a new localization system that does not use GPS but the TV signal. ALLOYT is called the new positioning system and it is intended to be used by users in locations where the GPS signal is unavailable. We are of course talking about buildings or covered spaces where the GPS of our devices cannot connect to the satellites as it would normally do if we were in a space with an opening to the sky.
Apple briefly described the inclusion of a hybrid positioning system using a combination of satellite and television signals from a company called Rosum Corporation. Whether that example was used to identify a generic type of chip or that particular company's chip is not known at this time. But the technology that the Rosum Corporation developed is definitely worth noting.
Instead of GPS, the system will use the TV signal to locate the user inside a closed space and all with the help of a new special chip. Fetomcells will be used in this process and the ALLOYT technology should locate us using a GPS chip with A-GPS technology but also a TV-GPS chip that is based on the TV signal to do the positioning. Apple's technology is more than interesting, but there is still a long way to go until its implementation in an iDevice.
The breakthrough chip opens up a multitude of new commercial opportunities by enabling femtocell synchronization and location, tracking of people and assets, and localized advertising over mobile TV devices in deep indoor locations such as shopping malls, hotels, campuses and factories with seamless delivery leveraging broadcast TV signals. The ALLOYT client combines the ALLOYT chip with a high-sensitivity A-GPS chip into a tightly-coupled hybrid TV-GPS solution which works across all types of environments: rural, suburban, urban, and indoor. Broadcast TV signals enjoy a 100,000x power margin advantage over GPS, and this extends location and synchronization capabilities deep into buildings and urban environments.
