Belgrade, Serbia, 13^th September 2023: Quectel Wireless Solutions, a global IoT solutions provider, has published a new white paper that sets out the challenges facing connected outdoor application providers. The market is now entering the mainstream but to ensure optimal service, operation providers and device makers need to ensure they can achieve accurate, robust positioning down to the centimeter-level. The paper titled ‘How to achieve cm-accurate positioning for mass-market IoT devices‘ reveals how the market has grown and is projected to accelerate. Additionally, it outlines strategies for tackling connectivity obstacles associated with global navigation satellite service (GNSS).

The paper explores the challenges of GNSS technology and discusses innovative capabilities that enhance positioning solutions to facilitate high accuracy and consistent accessibility. By implementing these solutions, businesses can operate with greater simplicity and safety because they know precisely where the asset is.

Among the use cases profiled in the paper are shared scooters and robotic lawnmowers. With more than 500,000 active shared scooters deployed in the EU and twice as many robotic lawnmowers being sold in the region each year, there are similarities from a technical perspective in the design of these products. The cost of a shared scooter is typically less than €500 while consumer lawnmowers cost less than €1,000.

In North America, scooter sharing revenue is expected to grow at a CAGR of 10.36% in the period 2023-2027, with the number of users set to hit 38.35 million in 2027. Robotic lawnmowers are also set for substantial growth in North America with Transparency Market Research predicting CAGR of 7.5% for the period 2022-2031 and the market to exceed a value of US$528.5 million by the end of 2031.

Both scooters and robotic lawnmowers require location updates to operate without infrastructure. Being able to locate an e-scooter to 20 or 30cm is key for operators while robotic mowers require even more precise location so they can mow right up to the edge of lawns. With high-accuracy positioning technology, users of robotic lawn mowers can avoid the effort involved in burying a boundary wire geofence around their gardens before using it. Additionally, the robotic lawnmower can work up to three times more efficiently following a defined trajectory.

Similarly, in the e-scooter market, operators can avoid public frustration and costly parking violation fines by ensuring parking locations are very precisely located and ensuring their users adhere to dedicated micro-mobility lanes and municipal rules that are rapidly emerging.

GNSS has proven to be a valuable positioning technology, but it has inherent challenges that hinder its effectiveness in certain scenarios, explains the paper. Fundamentally, GNSS needs to be able to ‘see’ the sky, so it can receive the direct signal from the satellites. In a real-world environment, accessing a direct signal is not always possible, and it cannot be relied upon as the only solution to provide a device with accurate location at all times. The paper details GNSS challenges and how to overcome limitations via techniques such as multi-band GNSS, real-time kinetic (RTK) positioning and dead reckoning (DR).

To learn about the challenges of achieving cm-accurate positioning and how to overcome them, download the Quectel white paper here.

About Quectel    

Quectel’s passion for a smarter world drives us to accelerate IoT innovation. A highly customer-centric organization, we are a global IoT solutions provider backed by outstanding support and services. Our growing global team of 5,900 professionals sets the pace for innovation in cellular, GNSS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth modules as well as antennas and services.

With regional offices and support across the globe, our international leadership is devoted to advancing IoT and helping build a smarter world.

For more information, please visit: quectel.com, LinkedIn, Facebook, and X (formerly known as Twitter).    

Media contact:  media@quectel.com