Demonstration of Broadcom GPS Chipset with IMES Indoor Loc Beacon

Indoor Messaging System (IMES) has been pioneered in Japan as a way to provide precise indoor location. The main concept of IMES is to transmit position and floor ID of the transmitter with the same RF signal as GPS. IMES transmits latitude, longitude, height, and floor ID by replacing the ephemeris and clock data in the navigation message of GPS. A single unit of IMES is then enough to get the position data, since the position itself is directly transmitted.

For GNSS receiver manufacturers only a GPS firmware modification is required, making IMES easy to integrate. However, IMES requires an authorization in each country; so far IMES is only legal in Japan and Singapore.

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona GPS Business News met with Frank Van Diggelen, Broadcom senior technical director GPS systems, who demonstrated their implementation of IMES on the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 that embeds the Broadcom 4752 GNSS chipset