PALO ALTO, Calif., May 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — oneNav today announced that it has closed a $21 million Series B funding round, led by GV, with participation from Norwest Venture Partners and GSR Ventures, bringing total funding to $33 million. The company also unveiled the world’s first pure L5 mobile GNSS receiver, which provides the highest location accuracy with half the footprint of existing solutions. Further validating the company’s unique mobile offering, oneNav has signed a strategic partnership agreement with In-Q-Tel Inc., providing U.S. intelligence and defense agencies with a first-of-a-kind GNSS technology solution.
“Navigation satellite constellations are getting a major upgrade—L5 signaling. oneNav has built the first pure L5 mobile receiver to leverage these modernized signals, and we will deliver our solution in a flexible licensing model, as a scalable and customizable IP core,” stated Steve Poizner, co-founder and CEO of oneNav. “I’m proud to be working with such an outstanding team of GNSS experts, as well as our top-notch investors GV, Norwest and GSR.”
Paul McBurney, oneNav’s co-founder and CTO added, “Pure L5 is a more cost, size and power efficient method to enable the benefits of modernized signals compared to current hybrid solutions.”
Today’s mobile GNSS solutions, which fuel location-based services including rideshare, smartphone navigation and 911 emergency calls, depend on L1 satellite signals that were developed in the 1970s. Legacy L1 systems can have significant accuracy deficiencies, especially in dense urban areas, placing users on the wrong side of the street or on the wrong block. L1 signals are also susceptible to jamming. Recently, satellite constellations have been upgraded with state-of-the-art L5 signaling, which enables higher accuracy, broadcasts in a protected frequency band, has modern error correction and is transmitted at higher power.
oneNav’s Pure L5 solution is built from the ground up to fully leverage modernized L5 signals from the GPS, Galileo, Beidou and QZSS navigation satellite constellations. Unlike current L1+L5 hybrid solutions that must first acquire on L1, oneNav’s Pure L5 solution both acquires and tracks on the new L5 signals, without L1 aiding, thereby taking full advantage of L5 benefits. By eliminating the need for L1 circuitry, oneNav cuts GNSS RF size, power and cost in half. Supercharged by AI/machine learning, oneNav Pure L5 delivers much higher accuracy, even in challenging areas such as urban canyons. oneNav Pure L5 is ideal for highly space constrained devices such as smartphones, wearables and IOT tracking modules. oneNav’s solution is delivered in a semiconductor IP license package that includes RTL, software and reference designs that can be integrated into a system on a chip (SOC) or built as a discrete chip.
“The mobile device industry–from phones to wearables–has made tremendous progress over the last twenty years,” stated Karim Faris, GV General Partner. “What’s surprising is that location-based services continue to have a significant margin of error, which can make all the difference when locating a rideshare passenger or pinpointing an emergency situation. With oneNav’s Pure L5 Mobile GNSS receiver, OEMs and application service companies will have the opportunity to provide their customers with state-of-the-art location-based services, driving competitive advantage.”
oneNav Pure L5 Use Cases
oneNav’s technology will dramatically improve location-based services that are used every day by individuals across the world to pinpoint their location. Common use cases include:
- Rideshare: Today’s mobile positioning technologies often place users on the wrong side of the street, or on the wrong block, making rideshare services very difficult to use. oneNav enables riders to more effectively match up with their drivers in downtown areas and other heavily blocked environments.
- Smartphone Navigation: It is sometimes difficult to establish your exact location, or to determine which way to turn when using a mobile navigation application in a dense urban area. oneNav’s high availability and precise accuracy enables reliable turn-by-turn directions.
- Emergency Calls: First responders need to accurately pinpoint the location of accidents in order to get to the right place quickly. oneNav’s reliable positioning and high accuracy get the right location information to ambulances, fire and police, enhancing public safety.
- Asset Tracking: COVID-19 has increased the need for supply-chain assets to be transported and tracked with precision. oneNav enables accurate position reporting for asset tracking and other IOT applications.
“oneNav is delivering a truly unique and valuable GNSS technology solution,” stated Steve Bowsher, President, IQT. “oneNav’s best-in-class technology will transform the mobile market, enabling a wide range of impactful applications for U.S. government agencies.”
About OneNav
oneNav is powering high performance positioning for location dependent mobile services. Based in Silicon Valley, oneNav is developing a next generation, pure L5 mobile GNSS receiver for smartphones, wearables and IoT devices. oneNav’s team comprises top GNSS experts from Qualcomm, Apple, Intel, SnapTrack, SiRF, Trimble and eRide, with decades of GNSS and mobile industry experience. The team has extensive experience in GNSS system architecture, multipath, signal processing, ASIC design and AI/machine learning, and has collectively filed over 200 career GNSS patents. oneNav’s investors include GV, Norwest Venture Partners and GSR Ventures. To learn more, please visit www.onenav.ai.
SOURCE oneNav
