SiGe Unveils World's First Galileo-Ready Receiver IC

location based services


SiGe Semiconductor, Inc. today announced the world's first Galileo-ready receiver for mass market consumer electronics, which will enable the integration of high-accuracy navigation services into portable devices including laptop computers, PDAs, media players, cell phones, and cameras. Galileo is a new satellite system that will greatly enhance navigation and positioning performance compared with the existing GPS system. The combination of GPS and Galileo will improve user experience of location based services by enabling products to determine position data much more consistently, more quickly, and with greater accuracy than with GPS alone. These benefits are expected to drive a significant opportunity, as the global satellite navigation market is expected to reach US $30 billion by the time the Galileo system becomes operational in 2008. The SE4120 allows consumer device manufacturers to capitalize on this market by designing Galileo-ready systems even as the standards are being finalized. The software-based receiver architecture ensures that changes to the standards can be supported with simple software upgrades. This allows manufacturers to design their systems now, ensuring they are among the first to market with Galileo-ready products. The software-defined architecture also minimizes board area, power consumption, and cost - benefits ideal for high-volume portable consumer electronics. "With the new SE4120L receiver, SiGe Semiconductor is the only semiconductor supplier able to meet the needs of OEMs wishing to enter the emerging Galileo market," said Stuart Strickland, product line director at SiGe Semiconductor. "Our unique software-defined signal processing architecture allows manufacturers to install and consumers to purchase Galileo-ready systems with confidence." Software-defined radio minimizes bill of materials, optimizes board area, cost and power The SE4120L is a highly integrated receiver with built-in support for software-defined satellite signal processing for both GPS and Galileo. The software architecture greatly reduces the load on host processors compared with conventional software approaches, and reduces cost and power consumption compared with dedicated hardware. The device features high integration to reduce the system bill of materials and overall cost. The integrated architecture includes an on-chip high-gain LNA capable of delivering 18dB of gain at a low noise figure of 1.6 dB without the need for bulky active antennas and costly, power-hungry external amplification. Eliminating these components reduces BOM cost and power consumption by over 50 percent while minimizing board area and maintaining high overall performance. The SE4120L is optimized for the lower possible power consumption, operating at less than 10 mA from a 2.7-3.3 V supply. Under controlled conditions, systems using the SE4120L are capable of tracking satellite signals down to as low as -170 dBm. The receiver also includes a linear AGC and a multi-bit analog to digital converter (ADC) with low digital IF. The device sampling is software configurable and includes support for low bandwidth serialized multi-bit I/Q output. A PLL synthesizer and image reject mixer further reduce external component count to simplify integration. The IF filters are programmable in software to support GPS and Galileo simultaneously or GPS operation alone. The SE4120L is supplied in a 4 x 4 x 0.9 mm QFN RoHS-compliant MSL1 package. The receiver is sampling now, with mass production scheduled for Q1 2007. The device is priced below US $3 in 100k unit quantities.