Septentrio Launches AsteRx-U and AsteRx-U Marine

Septentrio this week is launching two successors to its APS-U: The AsteRx-U and the AsteRx-U Marine multi-constellation dual-antenna receivers. The AsteRx-U will be presented to the public for the first time at two trade shows this week. ION GNSS+ takes place Sept.14-18 in Tampa, Fla., and INTERGEO 2015 will be held in Stuttgart, Germany, Sept. 14-18.

The AsteRx-U and the AsteRx-U Marine 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, Septentrio said. 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 automatically counteracts various kinds of ambient intentional and unintentional RF interference.

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 more than 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 also supports 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.

Straightforward to set up and integrate with existing systems, the AsteRx-U and AsteRx-U Marine use any device with a web browser to facilitate usability and configuration for the user.

“We want to make it easy for our customers to use high-accuracy positioning in their work,” said Jan Leyssens, Septentrio product manager. “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.”

Leyssens 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.”

Septentrio will be at Booth 318 at ION GNSS+, and at Hall: 4, Booth: D4.014, at INTERGEO.