GLONASS + GPS high-sensitivity software receiver ported to Intel Atom and ARM7 architectures

Four days ago, I mentioned a qualitative leap in miniaturization of GLONASS + GPS receivers due to the advent of the NAVIS chip, the size of a smaller ruble coin, and with a hundred-milliwatt consumption.

This NAVIS record, however, did not remain outstanding for a long time against the general background. The day before yesterday, SPIRIT-Telecom announced that its GLONASS + GPS receiver is generally software-based, so it is able to work on a regular Intel Atom processor through an external (USB plugged-in) antenna. The Intel Atom processor, as you know, is very small in size (see photo on the right). In addition, in many devices (netbooks and MIDs) the Atom chipalready installed, so you don’t have to spend money on its installation.

Company SPIRIT-Telecom's Chaldeans there that modern commercial sensitivity of GPS-receiver is approximately -190 dBW, and the sensitivity of the best Russian GLONASS receivers - no more than -180 dBW, but the sensitivity of the software navigation receiver SPIRIT on the platform Intel Atom comes to -210 dBW and it allows you to confidently make satellite signals inside buildings.

In addition to Intel Atom, this receiver was also ported to the ARM7 core, the architecture of which is freely licensed at a price less than half a megabyte, which opens the way for domestic production. The company claims that its integrated chip based on SPIRIT-GG24-03S-ARM software has dimensions 13 × 13 mm, power consumption is less than 0.2 W and will cost from 450 rubles in mass runs. (See the photo on the right.)

Note, however, that so far the NAVIS chip looks somewhat more profitable, because it eats half as much electricity. Spiritual software will benefit only from its unprecedented high sensitivity, and cross-platform, and even the prevalence of target hardware platforms (Atom and ARM).

The description of the SPIRIT Telecom receiver is available on the manufacturer’s website . I note that there on the diagram the size of the external hardware (“radio input”) is shown even larger (20 × 20 mm) than the size of the chip with the software receiver stated above.



It turns out that the qualitative difference between this two-component system and the classic navigation module is about the same as between the winmodem (or rather, a soft modem ) and a regular modem: some of the functions are transferred to the central processor (in this case, Intel Atom or ARM), to save a lot of money on the cost of the signal receiver.