CSR’s SiRFstarIV GPS powers location awareness in Samsung GALAXY S II smartphone

BANGALORE, INDIA: CSR announced that its SiRFstarIV GPS architecture is powering location awareness in the newest version of Samsung’s flagship smartphone, the GALAXY S II. Samsung chose the SiRFstarIV because its unique technologies enable the GALAXY S II to achieve superior GPS performance while operating in the electrically noisy environment found in today’s feature-packed smartphones.

“We are delighted that Samsung Electronics has chosen SiRFstarIV over competing solutions to provide superior location awareness for this exciting new flagship product, deepening and broadening our supplier relationship with a leader in the global consumer electronics market. For CSR, this win is another great example of the increasing adoption of the SiRFstarIV and an important validation of our vision that high-quality location will be part of every mobile device,” said Ahmet Alpdemir, senior VP of CSR’s Handset Business Unit.

“When we designed the SiRFstarIV architecture, we anticipated that GPS devices would be operating in very close proximity to a variety of other smartphone components generating various amounts of radio frequency interference which can easily swamp the meager GPS satellite signals we need to work with to achieve accurate positioning,” added Dave Huntingford, director of Product Management for CSR's Handset Business Unit.

Along with its low power location awareness capabilities, the SiRFstarIV includes CSR’s active jammer removal technology that can dynamically detect, track and actively block up to eight separate sources of interference in the GPS frequency band that would otherwise inhibit GPS performance, allowing it to easily coexist in close quarters with other noisy components without any extra effort. Features such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and 3G mobile radios, as well as the large LCD screens employed in smartphones are often sources of this kind of interference.

SiRFstarIV GSD4t
The SiRFstarIV GSD4t at the heart of the Samsung GALAXY S II is a host-based GPS receiver optimized for smartphones and other mobile consumer devices that contain their own powerful application processors. The essence of the SiRFstarIV breakthrough is its ability to continually maintain “better-than-hot-start” conditions in the GPS receiver for fast location fixes without having to be kept fully turned on all the time and draining precious battery power. Because of its SiRFstarIV architecture, the GSD4t is able to deliver superior performance with low-power efficiency in a compact design.

High Performance: The GSD4t receiver provides high performance, with navigation to -160 dBm, tracking to -163 dBm and excellent pass margins for E911 and 3GPP. It can maintain its full rated -160 dBm acquisition sensitivity without network assistance.

Low Power: The GSD4t receiver requires only 8 mW in 1-Hz TricklePower mode — two and a half times less energy than the SiRFstarIII architecture.

Cost Effective: Available in a 42-ball, 0.4-mm pitch wafer-level chip scale package (WLCSP), the GSD4t offers low integration and BOM costs and fast time-to-market, combining RF receiver, baseband, switcher and low-current LDOs on a single chip, and requiring only six to eight external passive components and a single SAW to provide a complete solution that occupies less than 20 square millimeters, including switcher parts.

SiRFstarIV GSD4t features such as active jammer removal, single-SAW design, an on-chip LNA, fail-safe I/O, integrated switchers, single supply voltage, simple RF matching and small size and packaging make it easier for designers to use and integrate into their products.