Hertfordshire, England:
SiGe Semiconductor announced what it claims is the first Galileo-ready receiver for mass-market consumer electronics. According SiGe, it will make possible the integration of high-accuracy navigation services into portable devices, including laptop computers, PDAs, media players, and cell phones.

Galileo, a new satellite system, will enhance navigation and positioning performance compared with the existing GPS system. The combination of GPS and Galileo will improve user experience of location-based services by enabling products to determine position data much more consistently, more quickly, and with greater accuracy.

The SE4120L chip allows consumer device manufacturers to capitalise on the power of the Galileo/GPS combination by designing Galileo-ready systems even as standards are being finalised. That's because the receiver architecture is software-based, which ensures that changes to the standards can be supported with simple software upgrades. On top of that, the architecture is claimed to minimise board area and cut power consumption.

Included on-chip is a high-gain LNA that can deliver 18dB of gain at a low noise figure of 1.6 dB without the need for bulky active antennas and costly, power-hungry external amplification. The SE4120L operates at less than 10mA from a 2.7V to 3.3V supply.