Septentrio launch

A special marine variant, the AsteRx-U Marine, can mitigate Iridium and Inmarsat uplink interference and has other features for marine survey and construction users.

The AsteRx-U and the AsteRx-U Marine are multi-constellation dual antenna receivers which incorporate the latest GNSS tracking and positioning algorithms and interference mitigation. Machine control users in the agricultural and construction industries as well as users in marine and mining industries benefit from a complete system with integrated UHF radio, Wi-Fi, USB, Bluetooth and cellular connectivity and a spectrum analyzer. All configurations can be done via the on-board web interface.

The AsteRx-U and AsteRx-U Marine feature a full range of positioning techniques and algorithms to ensure that users have the highest accuracy and reliability. The spectrum analyzer enables users to visualize the RF spectrum. Based on its extensive experience with real-life interference sources and their mitigation, Septentrio has developed interference mitigation technology that counteracts various kinds of ambient intentional and unintentional RF interference automatically.

The AsteRx-U family of receivers is built around Septentrio’s latest ASIC, GReCo4, which was introduced in 2014. It incorporates built-in jamming detection and countermeasures, multi-path rejection, fast acquisition, and other advanced features. Both receivers have over 500 hardware channels to track all available constellations (GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, Beidou, IRNSS and QZSS) and feature many algorithms: LOCK+ technology to maintain tracking during heavy vibration machine use and IONO+ technology to assure the accuracy of the position even in regions of elevated ionospheric activity.

The AsteRx-U has decimeter and centimeter level RTK positioning including TerraStar; the AsteRx-U Marine supports additionally Veripos PPP augmentation services. It includes extra anti-jamming technology to counter Iridium and Inmarsat-uplink interference, as well as an extra antenna connector for a dedicated L-band antenna to optimize L-band reception at high latitudes.

Jan Leyssens, Septentrio Product Manager stated: “We want to make it easy for our customers to use high accuracy positioning in their work. Using the integrated communication functionality in the compact and portable AsteRx-U, users won’t have to worry about adding their own modems or UHF radios to get access to corrections”. He continued: “The receiver web interface is available wirelessly on any mobile device. It was designed together with several of our key customers, resulting in an interface that is not only easy to use by field operators, but also provides many useful troubleshooting tools, such as the spectrum analyzer, to solve problems in the field and minimize downtime. ”

By Jake Frith