GNSS RECEIVER WITH WIRELESS INTERFACE

• US 20100194638A1
• Filed: 08/21/2008
• Published: 08/05/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 08/27/2007
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Qualcomm, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Qualcomm, Inc.
• Inventors: Rivard, Philippe
• Application Number:
  US12/671,022
• Publication Number:
  US 20100194638A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 342/357.42
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 19/05 providing aiding data
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 19/258 relating to the satellite constellation, e.g. almanac, ephemeris data, lists of satellites in view
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 19/35 Constructional details or hardware or software details of the signal processing chain

Abstract

A wireless GNSS receiver, for example a Bluetooth® receiver, including a bidirectional link to the host, and an update client, for downloading extended ephemeris data from the host, by the Bluetooth® link. The invention reuses the protocol used for NMEA data transfer, in order to send the extended ephemeris data up to the receiver. Hence, the extended ephemeris data can be sent without having to instantiate any other type of connection to the receiver. The invention reduces the cost and complexity of BT-GPS receivers that want to make use of extended ephemeris technology in order to reduce the time to first fix of GPS receivers left off for more than four hours.

Claims

1. A GNSS receiver (50), including a RF front-end (510), a signal processor (520) and a navigation engine (525) arranged to compute position data representing the receiver'"'"'s location, based on radio signals received from radiolocalization satellites, the GNSS receiver further including a wireless interface (55) for communicating the position data to a host system (40), characterized in that the communication between the wireless interface (55) and other components of the receiver (50) is bidirectional.

2. The GNSS receiver of the previous claim, further comprising a client module (530), operatively arranged to receive auxiliary data from the wireless interface (55), the auxiliary data being used to aid the computation of position data.

3. The GNSS receiver of the previous claim, wherein the auxiliary data includes extended ephemeris data.

4. The GNSS receiver of any of the previous claims, wherein the wireless interface (55) is a Bluetooth®

interface or a Wibree interface.

5. The GNSS receiver of any of the previous claims, further comprising a bidirectional UART (560) for the communication between the wireless interface (55) and other components of the receiver (50).

6. The GNSS receiver of any of the previous claims, wherein the wireless interface is arranged to use a bidirectional SPP communication channel between the GNSS receiver and the host (40).

7. The GNSS receiver of any of the claims from 2 to 6, in combination with a host device (40) comprising a host wireless interface (46) interoperable with the wireless interface of the GNSS receiver (55) to create a bidirectional wireless serial link (60) between receiver and host, and an updater module (44) of the host device (40), configured to transmit the auxiliary data to the client module (530) of the GNSS receiver (50).