Selection of GPS hardware architecture

　　The hardware system of on-board GPS is mainly composed of antenna, RF, baseband, processor, memory, bus interface and other modules. In the system architecture, these modules can be integrated or independent. The former integrates multiple units into one system single chip (SoC), single package (SiP) or module to reduce the design difficulty and cost; The latter adopts independent architecture to achieve high flexibility in design. When system engineers are designing, they must balance performance, cost and flexibility.

　　Position accuracy, sensitivity, Time to First Fix (TTFF) and channel number are important indicators of GPS receiver performance. Achieving these four requirements at the same time will inevitably put forward very high requirements in processor performance, number of correlator channels, memory capacity and interface speed, and greatly increase product costs. Therefore, it is wise to make a choice between the four to meet the market's requirements for performance and price.

　　ST STA2056 provides excellent cost-effectiveness with a highly integrated solution. STA2056 integrates the RF and baseband in the GPS receiver architecture, so that developers can save the energy and time required for calibration and speed up the product launch. STA2056 uses ARM7 TDMI as the core in the baseband part, with the frequency up to 66MHz; The RF part is an active antenna system, which also includes the interface connected with the passive antenna. In addition to the advantage of low power consumption, STA2056 has built-in ROM and SRAM memory, so only a few external components are needed. STA2056 adopts small QFN-68 package, which can effectively reduce the overall material (BOM) cost and product size, and make the design of related products cheaper and thinner.

　　If the RF and baseband are separated, the design will be more difficult, but the flexibility will also be improved. The baseband module can also be embedded in Flash memory and support rich bus interfaces. ST STA2058 adopts this architecture, which is very suitable for vehicle applications. It integrates 32-bit MCU (ARM7TDMI) and embedded flash memory module, and supports GPS systems such as RTCA-SC159/WAAS/EGNOS. STA2058EX also widely supports CAN, SPI, UART, I2C, USB and other interfaces, has external memory interfaces, CAN be used as a remote information processing service platform, and allows Glueless to connect with external devices (such as GSM/GPRS modules, chip cards, audio function DSP).

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