The Issue 

Even though consumers have been putting growing demands on GPS through their increasing use of mobile devices and wearables, and many more businesses and services have become more reliant on it, GPS hasn’t had any major updates for more than 20 years, meaning that it is prone to errors, inaccuracy, and can sometimes be unreliable.

GPS accuracy on phones has traditionally suffered from various issues which affect the precision of location data. For example, problems like signal blockage from buildings, natural landscape features, as well as indoor and underground settings can prevent GPS signals from reaching a phone effectively. One key issue highlighted by Zephyr is “multi-path errors,” where a signal from a GPS satellite reaches a receiver more than once, caused by signals bouncing off buildings or other large objects, thereby confusing smartphones with a single antenna.

Also, atmospheric conditions and satellite geometry can play a role as signals can be distorted by the atmosphere, and if satellites are poorly positioned relative to each other, accuracy can drop.

Phones can also face hardware limitations, for example the quality of the GPS receiver and the processing software can introduce errors. Assisted GPS, which uses network data to enhance location locking, can experience problems if network information is imprecise or outdated, and electromagnetic interference from other devices can affect signal clarity.

The integration of additional satellite systems such as GLONASS, Galileo, and Beidou with traditional GPS, along with software improvements, have helped the everyday location accuracy of modern smartphones in recent times. Nevertheless it’s often still not accurate enough for users and the apps they install.

The Implications 

Inaccurate GPS on phones can be frustrating for users by causing navigation problems, leading to lost time and potential safety concerns when driving or walking. It can also disrupt location based services such as ridesharing, food delivery, or, more seriously, emergency assistance, where precise location information is crucial.

For those relying on GPS for fitness activities, inaccuracies can spoil exercise tracking and goals. Also, inaccurate GPS can affect social experiences by misplacing geotags on social media and leading to mistakes in personal and professional mapping efforts. While generally reliable, the limitations of phone GPS can, therefore, cause inconveniences in daily life.

Zephr’s CEO Sean Gorman summarises the problems that poor GPS accuracy can cause, saying: “GPS is an essential technology for so many services we now rely on, and yet it is plagued by inaccuracy. This poses many challenges for businesses and consumers, and it will hamper the growth of developing technologies like augmented reality and autonomy.”  

Mr Gorman points out the benefits of a solution that can improve accuracy, saying: “Improved accuracy in GPS can translate into millions of dollars in economic benefit, but for us, it’s about more than just money. A more accurate GPS system can also improve daily routines and personal safety, from preventing navigational errors to creating safer collision avoidance systems in vehicles and enabling more advanced search-and-rescue efforts.” 

Zephr’s Solution 

Colorado based Zephr claims that its network based solution to GPS inaccuracy has achieved sub 60cm GPS accuracy in field trials, This is a level of accuracy typically not seen in consumer GPS solutions, by using nothing more than existing satellites and mobile devices networked together to share correction data. The company says its “breakthrough” networked GPS solution enhances accuracy by five to ten times, meaning less than one metre for mobile devices and wearables.

Zephr also claims that its solution, which is purely software based and doesn’t require hardware changes to a device or a new chipset or firmware, will be able to increase accuracy in dense urban environments, thereby solving problems caused by building bounce and blocked line of sight.

How? 

In short, Zephr’s system creates a multi receiver system, i.e. it turns users’ mobile devices into base stations which generate error corrections. Interconnected GNSS (global navigation satellite system) measurements across multiple devices thereby enable Zephr’s system to not only eliminate common errors and inaccuracies, but also to bring a stable and reliable signal with less risk of interference.

The Benefits

The benefits of this software or network based solution are:

• It’s fast and easy: billions of existing mobile devices can easily upgrade their GPS accuracy directly out of the box, with no need for hardware solutions.
• Easy integration: as a standalone SDK product it will allow any mobile app to easily upgrade GPS accuracy by embedding the feature.
• It’s cheap: it uses existing satellites and software with no need for additional solutions.
• Economic and human value: it could create cost savings, create opportunities in many industries, and unlock new markets in new and emerging ones, for example in navigation, delivery and logistics, rideshare, agriculture, advertising, search and rescue services, location based apps, collision avoidance systems, autonomous vehicles – robot/drone delivery systems, augmented reality, location based gaming, smart cities and more.
• It retains privacy: Zephyr says: “User information is always minimised, anonymised, short lived, never sold or transferred, and protected from third party access.” 

Funding 

The simplicity and accuracy of the solution, along with its many possibilities, have meant that Zephr has been able to attract $3.5 million of funding in a seed round led by Space Capital and First Spark Ventures. It’s been reported that this significant amount of funding will help support Zephr’s GTM strategy as it goes for rapid growth over the next year.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

Zephyr’s GPS accuracy solution could represent a significant milestone for businesses across a broad spectrum of industries. With the claim of solving GPS inaccuracies using software, Zephyr’s technology promises to deliver sub 60cm location precision, a game changer for any business reliant on geolocation data. This could mean enhanced reliability and fewer errors for logistics and delivery services, ensuring packages reach their destinations more efficiently, and with greater customer satisfaction. For the rideshare and transport sectors, improved accuracy will lead to quicker, more reliable pickups and drop offs, optimising route planning and saving on fuel and time: in short, service improvements and substantial cost savings.

Emerging markets and technologies also stand to gain substantially from Zephyr’s innovation. For example, agricultural businesses can employ more precise GPS for planting, harvesting, and monitoring equipment, which can lead to better resource management and yield prediction. In advertising, location based marketing could become more targeted and effective, with the potential to engage consumers based on precise location data.

For vital services like search and rescue, the benefits are potentially lifesaving, with the ability to pinpoint locations swiftly and accurately when every second counts. Autonomous vehicles, including drones and robots for delivery systems could also benefit by being able to navigate more safely and efficiently, reducing the risk of accidents and enabling them to operate in more complex environments. This could help advance this whole new field, with improvements to Amazon’s robots and its new delivery drones a good example. The augmented reality and gaming industries could also see an uptick in immersion and gameplay possibilities, as real world accuracy becomes a stable foundation for virtual experiences, thereby helping to create new products and opportunities and generate more revenue.

There may also be an important knock on effect of this precision for smart city initiatives. For example, urban planning, infrastructure management, and public safety could all be revolutionised with accurate, reliable geolocation data at their core. The implications for the Internet of Things (IoT) are also vast, with the potential for devices to communicate and operate with a new level of location intelligence.

Zephyr’s commitment to privacy is also likely to be promising for businesses using the technology and for more privacy conscious consumers.

Zephyr’s new system and what essentially represents the first big and necessary change to a GPS system in over 20 years that’s been increasingly in demand, could see widespread integration into countless applications. This could inject efficiency and accuracy into current services while catalysing the development of new ones. As a result, businesses that adapt quickly to this technology could see significant return on investment, not only through direct economic benefits but also via enhanced customer trust and brand reputation. The $3.5 million in seed funding reflects investor confidence in Zephyr’s solution, suggesting a ripe market ready for businesses harnessing the power of improved GPS technology.

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How Atomic Clocks Work 

Up until now, atomic clocks have been the world’s most accurate timekeepers by using electrons in the atomic shell of chemical elements, such as caesium, as the pulse generator to define the time.

Electrons absorb microwaves at specific frequencies, elevating their energy levels. Atomic clocks use this principle, targeting caesium atoms with microwaves and adjusting the frequency to maximise absorption, known as ‘resonance.’ This resonance helps to stabilise the clock’s quartz oscillator, allowing caesium clocks to maintain accuracy within a second for 300 ‘million’ years (note, that’s not a mistake: the ‘billion’ accuracy is outlined later in this article). The narrower the resonance, the more precise the clock.

Who Uses Atomic Clocks, And Why? 

The unparalleled precision, the size, at least server rack size, and the expense, from thousands to millions of pounds, means that most of us won’t have one in the kitchen any time soon. Atomic clocks are actually used in a variety of sectors for a number of reasons, with accuracy being the main one). These include:

• In Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), for example, GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo. These use atomic clocks on board their satellites to enable accurate positioning and navigation information to users worldwide.
• In telecommunications networks to synchronise data transmissions, ensuring efficient and error free data exchange.
• In scientific research, for example, physicists and other scientists use atomic clocks in experiments that require precise time measurements. They’re also crucial in testing fundamental principles of physics, like Einstein’s theory of relativity.
• In astronomy, atomic clocks are used to provide the synchronisation for multiple observatories to coordinate observing the same astronomical object (known as VLBI or Very Long Baseline Interferometry).

Other ways that atomic clocks are used are for accurate time stamping in financial market systems, in power grid synchronisation in the energy sector, in national timekeeping services, and in deep space exploration, to help with navigation accuracy in places where GPS signals aren’t accessible.

Strontium Clocks: Even More Accurate! 

While caesium atomic clocks are highly accurate, strontium clocks are even more so, with an accuracy of one second in 15 billion years!

The Challenge 

Although most of us would probably perfectly happy with such accurate clocks, scientists have long been frustrated by the fact that any improvement in accuracy is practically impossible to achieve with this method of electron excitation.

Nuclear Clocks

In what has been described as a “groundbreaking” experiment, and a “milestone” achievement, the European XFEL’s team focused on using the atomic nucleus of scandium rather than the electrons, and the atomic shell to generate an accurate pulse. This is because nuclear resonances are much more acute than the resonances of electrons in the atomic shell, although harder to excite.

The researchers have reported using X-rays with an energy of 12.4 kiloelectronvolts (keV, about 10,000 times the energy of visible light) to achieve the necessary resonance. One major bonus of using scandium is that it’s readily available as a high purity metal foil, and as the compound scandium dioxide.

Using this method, the researchers have reported being able to make a clock with an accuracy of 1:10,000,000,000,000 possible, which corresponds to one second lost in 300 billion years!

Why Now? 

Although the scientific potential of the scandium resonance has been known about for more than 30 years, as Anders Madsen, leading scientist at the MID experiment station at the European XFEL says: “Until now, however, no X-ray source was available that shone brightly enough within the narrow 1.4 feV line of scandium”  and “That only changed with X-ray lasers like the European XFEL.” 

Another important breakthrough by the scientists in this experiment has been the precise determination of the transition energy. As the head of the data analysis, Jörg Evers of the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg explains: “The exact knowledge of this energy is of enormous importance for the realisation of an atomic clock based on scandium.”  

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

This breakthrough in finding a way to make even more accurate atomic clocks has value for many high tech industries sectors, for example space global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), telecoms networks, scientific research, financial market systems, deep space exploration, and more. It is these types of areas where improving accuracy, even by what could seem an unfathomably small amount, can make a real difference. There will be rub off benefits to humanity, economies, and other industries in the future. Also, a clock with this new even greater level of accuracy could help research in some exciting, truly futuristic areas such as enabling gravitational time dilation to be probed at sub-millimetre distances, thereby enabling studies that haven’t been accessible so far.

Clearly, it won’t be possible to verify if the claim about the accuracy of the new type of atomic clock is as accurate as predicted, and most of us will have to take the scientists’ word for it that this is a significant breakthrough which could feed into other breakthroughs.

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