Image: Macy Bayern

Wednesday, Verizon announced that its Hyper Precise Location service—real-time kinematics service—will be available in more than 100 major U.S. markets this week. Verizon said it’s HPL can outperform today’s GPS technology and provides up to centimeter-level accuracy, compared with three to nine meters with Global Positioning Systems alone. It can be applied to HD-mapping, robotics, construction, manufacturing and smart agriculture. HPL can also support emerging technologies that depend on high-level location accuracy, such as delivery drones, and advanced Internet of Things applications such as infrastructure monitoring, critical asset tracking and high-value shipping.

SEE: Future of 5G: Projections, rollouts, use cases, and more (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

“Hyper Precise Location stands to boost or enable next-gen technologies across industries, from intelligent-driving to drone delivery to highly automated operations within construction, agriculture, and much more,” said TJ Fox, senior vice president of industrial IoT and automotive for Verizon Business in a press release. “HPL’s fast expanding coverage area, API friendliness, privacy protection, and use of open-delivery standards make it ideal for developers and customers demanding precision and flexibility.

“Global Navigation Satellite System technologies such as GPS are the core of localization applications. Traditional GNSS technologies offer an accuracy level of three to nine meters, and inaccuracies are primarily caused by multiple error sources between the GNSS satellites and customer devices, such as. satellite clock and orbit and atmospheric errors.

HPL’s Real Time Kinematics provides hyper-precise location data for IoT services where accuracy is critical, the announcement said. Errors are significantly curtailed by RTK which can provide hyper-precise location accuracies of sub-meter or even centimeter-level in all three dimensions: horizontal (latitude and longitude) and vertical.

HPL’s Software-as-a-Service provides real-time GNSS correction data to device receivers, enabling location accuracy within one to two centimeters, for users on 5G and 4G networks, Verizon’s press release said.

Verizon said that privacy protection is integral to the design and deployment of HPL and that user location-data will never be stored or shared.

Across the U.S., Verizon deployed reference stations for what the company describes as “pinpoint-level accuracy” to RTK compatible IoT devices.

HPL SaaS delivers GNSS correction data in real time to developers and customers on 5G and 4G networks and supports open-delivery standards and API integration with its users’ device management platforms.

HPL can pair with 5G Edge to work with emerging autonomous technologies such as cellular vehicle-to-everything communication. With C-V2X, HPL and 5G Edge, Last week (April 8) Verizon teamed with automakers to demonstrate HPL applications in vehicle-pedestrian safety scenarios

HPL uses open delivery standards including RTCM for its data streams and others will be added “on a rolling basis,” Verizon said. IoT devices using HPL can be accessed and managed through a user API and the ThingSpace IoT management platform. Support resources on ThingSpace detail API integration and coverage availability.