Control and features for satellite positioning system receivers

• US 8,013,787 B2
• Filed: 09/02/2004
• Issued: 09/06/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 09/02/2003
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: ONO Pharmaceutical Company Limited, CSR Technology Incorporated (Qualcomm, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: SIRF Technology Incorporated (Qualcomm, Inc.)
• Inventors: Brown, James, Harvey, Robert, Raman, Sundar, Zhang, Qingwen, Higgins, Williams, Michali, Peter, Chansarkar, Mangesh, Underbrink, Paul A., Zhang, Gengsheng, Falk, Henry D., Norman, Charles P.
• Primary Examiner(s): Phan; Dao L
• Application Number:
  US10/570,578
• Publication Number:
  US 20090040103A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,560 Days
• Field of Search: 342/357.25, 342/357.4, 342/357.46, 342/357.74, 342/357.77, 701/207, 701/213
• US Class Current: 342/357.4
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 19/13 Receivers
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 19/24 Acquisition or tracking or demodulation of signals transmitted by the system synchronisation aspects of direct sequence spread spectrum modulation H04B1/7073
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 19/34 Power consumption
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 19/37 Hardware or software details of the signal processing chain
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 1/707 using direct sequence modulation
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 2201/70715 with application-specific features

Abstract

Control and feature systems for processing signals from a satellite positioning system include an expert system receiver manager; a joint detection, carrier centering and bit sync acquisition subsystem; peak detection; a multi-dimensional measurement interpolation subsystem; a subsystem for mode switching between a navigational signal; and power control module for a receiver.

Claims

1. A satellite positioning receiver enabled device comprising:

a first subsystem within the satellite positioning receiver enabled device;

a second subsystem within the satellite positioning receiver enabled device operating in parallel with the first subsystem for computing a location of the receiver; and

a semaphore of bits that contains a first set of bits monitored by the first subsystem and a second set of bits monitored by the second subsystem where parallel operations performed by the first subsystem and the second subsystem are synchronized using the first set of bits and the second set of bits contained in the semaphore of bits to compute the location of the receiver.

2. The satellite positioning receiver of claim 1, further comprises:

a bit associated with first subsystem that is set in the semaphore of bits by the first subsystem; and

another bit in the semaphore of bits associated with the second subsystem that is set by the second subsystem in response to the bit set by the first subsystem.

3. The satellite positioning receiver of claim 2, where the other bit is set by the second subsystem after the second subsystem acts in response to the bit set by the first subsystem.

4. The satellite positioning receiver of claim 1, wherein the first subsystem is a signal processing subsystem.

5. The satellite positioning receiver of claim 1, wherein the first subsystem is a FFT subsystem.

6. The satellite position receiver of claim 1, wherein the set of bits associated with the first subsystem may be changed by only the first subsystem.

7. The satellite position receiver of claim 6, wherein the set of bits associated with the second subsystem may be changed by only the second subsystem.

8. The satellite positioning receiver of claim 1, further comprising:

a third set of bits in the semaphore bits that is associated with software.

9. The satellite positioning receiver of claim 8, wherein the third set of bits in the semaphore of bits is changeable only by the software.

10. A method of communicating between subsystems within a satellite positioning receiver enabled device comprising:

associating a first set of bits in a semaphore with a first subsystems within the satellite positioning receiver;

associating a second set of bits in the semaphore with a second subsystem operating in parallel with the first subsystem for computing a location of the receiver; and

wherein parallel operations performed by the first subsystem and the second subsystem are synchronized using the semaphore of bits to compute the location of the receiver.

11. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

setting a bit in the first set of bits by the first subsystem; and

responding to the bit by the second subsystem setting another bit in the second set of bits.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein the first subsystem is a signal processing subsystem.

13. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

associating a third set of bits in the semaphore of bits with software.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprises:

communicating between the software and the first subsystem by setting a bit in the semaphore of bits associated with the software; and

responding to the bit in the semaphore of bits with another bit that is set by the first subsystem.

15. The method of claim 13, wherein changing the third set of bits may only be done by the software.

16. A non-transitory computer readable medium having machine-readable instructions stored thereon for communicating between subsystems within a satellite positioning receiver, the medium comprising:

instructions for associating a first set of bits in a semaphore with a first subsystems within the satellite positioning receiver;

instructions for associating a second set of bits in the semaphore with a second subsystem operating in parallel with the first subsystem for computing a location of the receiver; and

wherein parallel operations performed by the first subsystem and the second subsystem are synchronized using the semaphore of bits to compute the location of the receiver.

17. The instructions of claim 16, further comprising:

instructions for setting a bit in the first set of bits by the first subsystem; and

instructions for responding to the bit by the second subsystem setting another bit in the second set of bits.

18. The instructions of claim 16, further comprising:

instructions for associating a third set of bits in the semaphore of bits with software.

19. The instructions of claim 18, further comprises:

instructions for communicating between the software and the first subsystem by setting a bit in the semaphore of bits associated with the software; and

responding to the bit in the semaphore of bits with another bit that is set by the first subsystem.

20. The instructions of claim 18, wherein changing the third set of bits may only be done by the software.