The upgraded u-blox platform is claimed to reduce power consumption by 10% over previous firmware versions and supports six global and regional variants of GNSS: GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, QZSS, SBAS and Galileo. It is also able to track up to three constellations concurrently and makes full use of SBAS and QZSS augmentation systems.
Additionally, the M8 supports the Russian and European emergency call systems ERA-GLONASS and eCall, which will be required in all new vehicles from 2018.
The growing number of wireless systems that use GNSS positioning has led to an increased threat of attack - with vehicles’ - and wearables’ - GPS systems being spoofed.
To counter this, the M8 FW 3.01 contains u-blox’s anti-spoofing system, which detects fake GNSS signals; uses a message integrity protection system to prevent ‘man-in-the-middle’ attacks; and suppresses any detected jamming attempt.
Being fully integrated into the platform, the M8 FW 3.01’s security mechanisms are said to be more effective than an external system implementation.
