Fastrax GPS software

Click2Contact

Fastrax has selected SiGe Semiconductors’ SE4120 radio front-end to boost its Software GPS to a sensitivity of -163 dBm, making available a high-performance GPS, complemented with a reference design to enable easy integration by third parties. The reference design is also available as a turnkey solution in the Fastrax iT900 RF module.

The combined offering converts the GPS radio frequency (RF) signal into a digital intermediate frequency (IF) signal that is processed by the software. The software-based approach is expected to increase the speed of adoption of GPS functionalities beyond the high-end mobile phones. Applications platforms include personal navigation devices (PNDs), mobile internet devices (MIDs), ultra-mobile PCs (UMPCs), personal media players (PMPs), smartphones, digital cameras and laptops.

While traditional GPS solutions require the integration of a GPS specific baseband, making the design more complex, a software-based solution allows faster time-to-market with fewer costs and more adjustable features. With the software, the GPS functionality can easily be managed and customised to be fully optimised for each specific device and application.

The software focuses on the optimisation of signal acquisition and correlation, the functions typically requiring the most CPU power and memory in GPS solutions. It obtains the best performance on every platform, depending on available processing power and memory. Its flexibility enables portability to a range of CPUs, specific application processors and operating systems as it is based on the company’s iSuite architecture, which was originally designed for embedded environments.