BMW incorporates GMV’s safe and precise positioning technology in its new automated driving vehicles

The technology multinational GMV has recently reached the milestone of
incorporating its safe, high precision and reliable positioning technology
onboard vehicles of the German premium car manufacturer BMW Group.

GMV’s positioning solution comprises two components: an onboard Positioning
Engine software (PE) and a GNSS Correction Service (CS). The CS provides BMW
Group vehicles with corrections to the Broadcast Ephemeris for different
GNSS constellations, augmentation data to remove local atmospheric effects
and safety-related information for computing a reliable user position. The
PE integrated in the vehicles’ on-board unit also uses the corrections,
together with GNSS signals and information from other sensors, to compute a
trustable vehicle position, speed, and heading.

Both CS and PE have been developed, validated, and evolved over the last
years in order to be able to cope with the requirements laid down by the
different GNSS-based high  accuracy positioning markets including the
automotive market. The latter has been the latest challenge taken on by GMV
within its positioning solution, for which ISO 26262 (among others), the
strictest automotive standards, plus the highly demanding quality practices
for critical software were adopted.

In addition to the software side, GMV’s solution relies on a secure and
redundant physical infrastructure. GMV owns and operates a Worldwide GNSS
Station Network, which provides the GNSS raw data needed by the CS to
generate the corrections. Such corrections are computed within two
physically independent Data Centers, giving GMV’s solution the necessary
availability levels for automated driving applications.

This production launch milestone adds automated driving functions to GMV’s
positioning solution market portfolio, consolidating GMV as one of the main
worldwide suppliers of GNSS based high accuracy positioning solutions.

A wealth of experience and proven expertise
GMV has  more than 30 years’ experience in the GNSS domain and has been
targeting safe and accurate positioning systems for more than 20 years. The
company has also more than 18 years’ experience in the supply of software
for the automotive sector, working with both automotive OEMs and Tier-1
suppliers.

As part of the magicGNSS suite, GMV GSharp for Automotive provides
high-accuracy, safe and reliable positioning information (position,
velocity, and heading), which is later combined with automated driving
functions. The safe positioning solution is based on satellite navigation
(GNSS) technologies, hybridized with other sensors in the vehicle, such as
Inertial Measurement Units, Wheel Speed sensors or Odometers. GMV has
developed a Positioning Engine software, which works embedded in the
vehicle, and supplies the Correction Service, which is a server-based
element broadcasting augmentation data to the Positioning Engine through the
Internet.

Both Correction Service and Positioning Engine are developed following the
ISO 26262 and ISO 21448 standards to ensure compliance with safety
requirements. The solution also complies with the concept of
security-from-design as per ISO 21434, including the necessary
counter-measures in the SW and system and in the GNSS related attack
detection (anti-spoofing and anti-jamming schemes). The most demanding
automotive project management practices and the strict industry standards
for software engineering (A-SPICE CL3) have been applied during its
development.