NTLab announces highly linear GPS/GLONASS/Galileo/BeiDou RF front-end with reduced power consumption

November 12, 2014 -- NT1051 is a dual-channel multi-frequency (L1/L2/L3/L5) mutli-system (GPS/GLONASS/Galileo/BeiDou) RF front-end. Manufactured in 0.18um TSMC BiCMOS technology, it provides operability of GNSS receiver even if interference power is 120dB higher than satellite signal.

The purpose of the design was to bring benefits of high-grade GNSS receivers to portable devices. To allow reliable navigation in presence of interference, NT1051 has a 1dB compression point (on RF input) of -40dBm. That allows stable tracking even if interfering signal is 120dB higher (compared to -160dB of typical tracking sensitivity) than satellite signal.

Simultaneously, portable devices require reduced power consumption. But there is always a tradeoff between receiver linearity and consumed current. So the task of combining high dynamic range with low consumption was successfully solved in NT1051 architecture. Resulting power consumption is below 60mW. To allow dual-antenna receiver configurations, NT1051 has two separate channels with common fractional frequency synthesizer.