The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Chinese mobile manufacturer Xiaomi are in advanced stage of talks on provision of chipsets that can support NaVIC, the Indian version of Global Positioning System (GPS), an official said here on Wednesday.
The NavIC-friendly chipset, being manufactured by the US chip manufacturer Qualcomm, is designed to provide accurate position information service to users in India. The chipset powered on phone will offer support for region extending up to 1500 km from the country’s boundary, which is its primary service area, the ISRO has stated earlier.
"Qualcomm has announced that its chip is going to have NaVIC and they are releasing it. Now almost Xiaomi is in agreement to have it. Xiaomi may launch its mobile phones with NavIC chipsets," the ISRO official said.
NavIC is the abbreviation of Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS).
According to the ISRO, the IRNSS was developed for terrestrial, aerial and marine navigation, disaster management, vehicle tracking and fleet management and integration with mobile phones.
ISRO has provided Qualcomm with access to 7 of its indigenous satellites of which 6 were seen operational on the sidelines of the India Mobile Congress 2019 few months back.
It would provide Standard positioning Service (SPS) to all users and Restricted Service (RS), which is an encrypted service for only authorised users. The IRNSS is expected to provide a position accuracy of better than 20 metre in the primary service area.
The ISRO official said the international body 3GPP has formally approved usage of NavIC, allowing the ISRO to collaborate with Qualcomm.
With this, services like Google Maps and Map My India will get to use NavIC to offer more accurate navigation via GPS which will help your Uber driver reach your exact location rather than reaching some other address.
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