(SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.) — Hemisphere GNSS announces the release of Athena, its next-generation GNSS engine. Offering significantly enhanced performance, often exceeding that delivered by other industry leaders, Athena provides Hemisphere with a future-proof foundation enabling market-defining performance, flexibility and reliability.
Hemisphere has designed its new core engine to maximize the company’s ability to excel at the rigorous GNSS requirements of multiple market segment customers in machine control, survey and GIS. Athena’s innovative design makes it a state-of-the-art GNSS technology for now and in the future.
The release of Athena is a significant milestone for Hemisphere but just the first piece of a wave of new technologies being delivered into the market by Hemisphere in 2015.
“Our goal is to be nothing short of the best GNSS technology partner in the industry, and a key component of that is delivering market-leading technologies tailored to our customer’s needs,” said Chuck Joseph, Hemisphere GNSS CEO and president. “To that end we have put together a world-class team that is totally rethinking our product family, and our new Athena engine is just the first, powerful proof of our fresh approach.”
Outstanding capabilities
Athena excels in virtually every environment where high-accuracy GNSS receivers can be used. Hemisphere’s customers have tested and proven Athena’s performance in long baseline, in open-sky environments, under heavy canopy, and in geographic locations experiencing significant scintillation.
• Initialization time – One of the most reliably consistent initialization performances in the industry, while at the same time, performing initializations in less than 15 seconds at better than 99.9 percent reliability.
• Robustness in very difficult operating environments – Extremely high productivity under the most aggressive of geographic and landscape oriented environments for GNSS, while delivering up to 50 percent better performance in user tests matched against the best competitive systems on the market.
• Performance on long baselines – Industry-leading position stability for long baseline applications, with position quality often times exceeding the performance of the best-of-breed RTK systems on the market.
• Performance under scintillation – Sustained accuracy under ionospheric scintillation activities, providing one of the most reliable ways in the market to work with GNSS in scintillation-affected areas.
“I’ve had an opportunity to thoroughly test Athena in both moderate and extreme environments,” said Andy Carbognin, independent GNSS test specialist at Vecto Geomatics. “I’m very impressed with the performance, and we’ve tested alongside the current industry leaders’ top-of-the-line products. In every situation, Athena is proving to be a tremendous improvement over Hemisphere’s most widespread legacy firmware versions, at a minimum, matching the industry’s best while in many cases exceeding their performance.”
Industry support
“Carlson Software has extensively tested Hemisphere's new Athena RTK engine on the Carlson BRx5 GNSS receiver. The Athena RTK engine provides precise, reliable and repeatable positions. Athena exceeds or matches the performance of all other GNSS receivers it has been tested against. We have been particularly impressed with the performance of the Athena engine, when using a long baseline or in areas where there is a limited view of the sky. Athena is a first class RTK engine,” said Butch Herter, director of hardware eevelopment, Carlson Software.
“In the marine construction and hydrographic survey markets, time is money. We’ve seen very high system reliability and impeccable results using the Athena RTK engine, which ensures we are achieving maximum up-time,” said Harrison Steves, operations manager at Cable Arm. “As well, not being tied to a specific make of RTK base gives us flexibility with our equipment deployment.”
“We’ve found Athena to offer exceptional performance, especially their RTK fix times and maintaining RTK lock on long baselines,” said David Vaughn, CEO, Novariant. “With the latest competitive performance testing completed, Novariant is excited about adding Hemisphere’s Athena offering to the list of the Novariant-recognized certified receivers that, when combined with our precision steering solution, can assure centimeter-level steering control in the toughest environments in the world.”
“We’ve been working with Hemisphere’s technology for a number of years,” states Randy Noland, VP of business development and director of machine control, Carlson Software. “I’m amazed at the team they’ve brought together and how they’re radically modernizing their technology. Collaborating with the ‘new’ Hemisphere has been an eye-opening experience, and I’m excited at how their innovative technologies will positively impact our future business."
Availability
Before the end of this month, Athena will be included in all Hemisphere multi-frequency, RTK-capable products, such as the A325, R330, S320, and VS330. To download and install Athena, visit Hemisphere’s Software page.
About Hemisphere GNSS Inc.
Hemisphere GNSS designs and manufactures innovative, cost-effective GNSS products for positioning, heading and navigation applications for marine, survey, construction, mapping, OEM and other markets. The company holds numerous patents and other intellectual property and sells globally with several leading product brands, including Crescent, Eclipse and Vector for precise GNSS applications. Hemisphere GNSS has its business headquarters in Scottsdale, Ariz., with a product development, sales and marketing facility in Calgary, Alberta. Hemisphere GNSS is part of UniStrong Science & Technology Co., Beijing, China. For more information about Hemisphere GNSS, go to www.hgnss.com.
