RFMD solution integrates GPS apps in mobile devices

RF Micro Devices (RFMD) announced that its new software-based GPS solution, GPS RF8110, is sampling to initial customers. The GPS RF8110 end-to-end solution enables the integration of high-performance GPS applications in smartphones, wireless PDAs, digital cameras, gaming devices and other cost-sensitive, battery-operated mobile devices.

The GPS RF8110 eliminates the need for a dedicated baseband ASIC by leveraging the available host processing power and memory resources in feature-rich smartphones, wireless PDAs and other consumer devices. This solution is based on a mixed-signal CMOS RFIC bundled with the company's proprietary core GPS software.

The GPS RF8110 offers scalable performance depending on the required sensitivity, accuracy and end-user application, the company said. It supports push-to-fix, location based Services applications, as well as automotive and pedestrian navigation in outdoor and low signal strength environments.

The hardware component of the solution is a mixed-signal RFIC built in 0.18?m CMOS technology for low power and small size. The RFIC has a hardware accelerator on-chip to offload the system's applications processor and to minimize the data transfer rate to the host CPU. Low power consumption is achieved through various hardware and software-controlled power save modes.

Designed to be used in "best-in-class" portable devices, the GPS RF8110 can be easily integrated into a variety of host platforms powered by ARM-based applications processors like Intel's XScale processor, Texas Instrument's OMAP, Freescale's i.MX and Samsung's S3C. It is OS agnostic and supports a variety of mobile platforms, including Linux, Windows Mobile 5.0 and Symbian. The RFMD GPS RF8110 supports both autonomous as well as standards-based assisted modes of operation.

To shorten customers' development cycle times, RFMD provides platform-specific hardware and software evaluation kits. Current development kits are based on the Intel PXA270 applications processor and the Windows CE/Windows Mobile 5.0 OS. In addition, kits for TI, Freescale and Samsung-based platforms will also be introduced.