Japanese firm SoftBank, its subsidiary ALES and Swiss-based U-Blox have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to cooperate in GNSS augmentation services for global markets.

SoftBank provides the Ichimill GNSS augmentation service in Japan, ALES operates a business that generates and delivers positioning correction data, and U-Blox is a provider of positioning services for the automotive, industrial and consumer markets. U-Blox also provides electronic components for wireless communications and the PointPerfect GNSS augmentation service in Europe, USA and other countries and regions.

Through this collaboration, SoftBank, ALES and U-Blox plan to construct GNSS augmentation infrastructure for Japan, Europe and the USA, develop GNSS receivers and devices, and expand service areas.

Since November 2019, SoftBank has been offering Ichimill, a GNSS augmentation service that offers highly accurate positioning with a margin of error of only a few centimetres in Japan. In addition to providing technology that enables the generation and delivery of correction data, ALES has been offering its centimetre-level positioning service to consumers in Japan since August 2020.

Since July 2021, U-Blox has been providing the PPP-RTK based GNSS augmentation service PointPerfect, which is now available in the USA and Europe.

Since GNSS augmentation services such as these are mainly offered separately by country and region, client companies, which include global automotive manufacturers and agricultural machinery manufacturers, sign up for separate service contracts in each country and region, making GNSS receiver configuration more complex. Seeing an opportunity to construct a usage environment that enables the provision of common GNSS augmentation services in Japan, USA and Europe, SoftBank, ALES and U-Blox agreed to a business collaboration.

“Breaking down the geographical fragmentation of the market for high-precision GNSS will allow SoftBank to market the same product in the USA, Europe and Japan,” said Makoto Noda, vice president at SoftBank and president of ALES. “As a one-stop-shop for all the required hardware and service components, including their GNSS augmentation service, U-Blox is the ideal partner to help SoftBank and ALES achieve our vision of global expansion.”

The three companies aim to develop a global correction data delivery infrastructure. GNSS augmentation services use correction methods that differ by country and region, and there is a wide variety of correction signal formats. In 2022, the three companies will consider developing correction data delivery infrastructure that delivers unified correction signal formats for use in any country or region.

With this infrastructure, companies using Ichimill or PointPerfect will be able to conduct GNSS augmentation if they are in range of both services, which will eliminate the need for separate service contracts by country or region.

In addition to correction data delivery, an environment that allows for the easy implementation of GNSS receivers and other devices is necessary for GNSS augmentation services. With the launch of Ichimill, SoftBank developed its own GNSS receivers and is offering them in Japan at affordable prices for easy implementation. The three companies will consider jointly developing GNSS receivers and modules that can be used globally.

The companies will collaborate closely to ensure the performance of the services in all the regions covered are comparable. This is important to provide a consistent experience across all the regions. Furthermore, the three companies plan to study service expansion into other areas, including Asia.

SoftBank is promoting the deployment of non-terrestrial network (NTN) offerings that encompass satellite- and stratospheric-based telecommunication platforms to provide connectivity to the sea, sky, developing countries and rural areas lacking internet infrastructure so everyone around the world has access to the internet. The three companies will consider the development of NTN-linked services, such as correction data delivery using small amounts of data in a way that is suitable for NTN bandwidths.

“Our customers, which include automotive OEMs and tier-ones, depend on globally consistent GNSS augmentation services to sell vehicles across multiple markets,” said Franco De Lorenzo, principal product manager at U-Blox. “So do the manufacturers of industrial IoT devices and unmanned aerial and ground vehicles. We are confident that our collaboration with SoftBank will help us provide the level of service our customers need for true global high precision applications.”