Broadcom® Engineer Receives Prestigious Institute of Navigation Thurlow Award

IRVINE, Calif., Jan. 26, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Broadcom Corporation (Nasdaq: BRCM), a global leader in semiconductors for wired and wireless communications, today announced that Dr. Frank van Diggelen, senior technical director of Broadcom's Global Navigation Systems (GNSS) line of business and chief navigation officer, has been named the recipient of the prestigious Institute of Navigation (ION) Thurlow Award that recognizes outstanding contributions to the science of navigation.

Among other innovations, van Diggelen pioneered important mathematical techniques to address the problem of computing a position using measurements obtained prior to achieving bit or frame synchronization. In related research, van Diggelen developed algorithms to resolve the millisecond ambiguities that arise when working with sub-millisecond pseudo-ranges.

Dr. van Diggelen was part of a team that created the concept of extended ephemeris assistance data, which the group called Long Term Orbit (LTO) data. This innovation built on earlier concepts for A-GPS by allowing assistance data to be valid for periods much longer than broadcast ephemeris. To facilitate the creation of LTO and other assistance data, van Diggelen was instrumental in the creation of a worldwide network of reference stations -- the first and only network of its kind dedicated to A-GPS applications.

Dr. van Diggelen's work has had a great impact on commercial GNSS applications especially in the adoption of GPS as a mainstream technology for mobile telephones. His techniques have paved the way for time-to-fix reductions down to one second; for both position computations in extremely low signal environments and for the extension of A-GPS in situations where a reliable initial position is not available. His innovations in extended ephemeris allowed A-GPS techniques to be applied in smart phones and navigation devices (which may not always have access to a network connection) for obtaining real-time assisted data.

Dr. van Diggelen is sole- or co-inventor for over 50 issued U.S. patents and the author of the bestselling textbook "A-GPS: Assisted GPS, GNSS, and SBAS" (Artech House, Boston & London 2009). He is a frequent speaker at the ION conference and other navigation industry conferences, and is a consulting assistant professor at Stanford University where he teaches a class on GPS. He received his Ph.D degree in electrical engineering from Cambridge University.

Supporting Quotes:

Dr. Henry Samueli, Broadcom Co-Founder and Chief Technical Officer:

"Dr. Frank van Diggelen has made important contributions to the field of navigation, especially in the area of navigational computation for assisted GPS (A-GPS) applications. As a community of engineers, we join the Institute of Navigation in recognizing Dr. van Diggelen's achievements and congratulate him and his family on his selection for this award."

Lisa Beaty, Executive Director of the Institute of Navigation

"We are very pleased to recognize Dr. Frank van Diggelen from Broadcom Corporation as this year's recipient of the prestigious Thurlow Award. Dr. van Diggelen has made numerous outstanding contributions to the science of navigation in the area of navigational computation for assisted GPS applications. We congratulate Dr. van Diggelen for earning this special industry award."

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Other Supporting Resources: – http://www.ion.org/

About Broadcom

Broadcom Corporation is a major technology innovator and global leader in semiconductors for wired and wireless communications.  Broadcom products enable the delivery of voice, video, data and multimedia to and throughout the home, the office and the mobile environment.  We provide the industry's broadest portfolio of state-of-the-art system-on-a-chip and software solutions to manufacturers of computing and networking equipment, digital entertainment and broadband access products, and mobile devices.  These solutions support our core mission: Connecting everything®.

Broadcom, one of the world's largest fabless communications semiconductor companies, with 2009 revenue of $4.49 billion, holds more than 4,500 U.S. and 1,900 foreign patents, and has more than 7,800 additional pending patent applications, and one of the broadest intellectual property portfolios addressing both wired and wireless transmission of voice, video, data and multimedia.

A FORTUNE 500® company, Broadcom is headquartered in Irvine, Calif., and has offices and research facilities in North America, Asia and Europe.  Broadcom may be contacted at +1.949.926.5000 or at www.broadcom.com.

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SOURCE Broadcom Corporation; BRCM Mobile & Wireless