Catching the Wave: SiRF’s New Architecture Tackles GPS for Consumer Products

摘要

As the idea of location awareness begins to penetrate intornconsumer products, a new paradigm will be required tornmeet the exacting demands of mainstream consumersrnusing GPS. This paper will introduce SiRF’s newrnSiRFstar?II architecture that combines SiRF’s powerfulrnsystem and software techniques with the latest processrntechnologies to optimize GPS for consumer products.rnThe SiRFstarII architecture consists of a new RF IC and arnnew digital ASIC that combines a GPS digital signalrnprocessor with on-chip DGPS processors, a generalrnpurpose CPU, memory and peripherals to create arnpowerful platform for a variety of applications. The GPSrndigital signal processor improves SiRF’s industry leadingrnfast acquisition performance with innovative hardwarernadditions. Extensive levels of system integration simplifyrnthe system design by reducing the board space and powerrnconsumption. The ASIC is designed to QS-9000 qualityrnstandards.rnUsing BiCMOS technology, the RF front-end chip has thernhighest functional integration in the industry, including anrnintegrated IF filter, resulting in the smallest and lowestrnpart count RF section available today.rnThe SiRFstarII is supported by GPS software designedrnfrom the start to incorporate user tasks and providernmaximum available throughput for the applicationrnsoftware. The GPS tasks can be run in either a GPS-majorrnmode where application tasks are scheduled from the GPSrntiming interrupts or in a GPS-minor mode where the GPSrntasks are scheduled by the application software.rnAll together, the SiRFstarII architecture allows a wholernnew set of consumer devices to be rapidly developedrnaround a high performance, cost effective chip set. Thernarchitecture was also designed to be availablernsimultaneously in Intellectual Property (IP) core form tornenable easy integration of GPS into platforms such asrncellular phones.