Power-saving receiver circuits, systems and processes

• US 8,331,898 B2
• Filed: 10/02/2008
• Issued: 12/11/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 10/03/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Texas Instruments, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Texas Instruments, Inc.
• Inventors: Waters, Deric Wayne, Ramasubramanian, Karthik, Raghupathy, Arun
• Primary Examiner(s): LE, NHAN T
• Application Number:
  US12/244,060
• Publication Number:
  US 20090168843A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,531 Days
• Field of Search: 455132-134, 455/313, 455/323, 455/334, 455/343.1
• US Class Current: 455/343.1
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 19/34 Power consumption
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 1/1615 Switching on; Switching off, e.g. remotely battery saving circuits associated with selective call operation H04W52/00; details of power consumption reduction in a PLL, H03L7/0802, H03L7/14, H03L2207/08, H03L2207/18; muting amplifiers by gain control see H03G3/34

Abstract

An electronic circuit includes a receiver circuit (BSP) operable to perform coherent summations having a coherent summations time interval, and a power control circuit (2130) coupled to said receiver circuit (BSP) and operable to impress a power controlling duty cycle (T_ON, T_OFF) on the receiver circuit (BSP) inside the coherent summations time interval. Other circuits, devices, systems, methods of operation and processes of manufacture are also disclosed.

Claims

1. An electronic circuit comprising

a receiver circuit operable to perform coherent summations having a coherent summations time interval;

and

a power control circuit coupled to said receiver circuit and operable to impress a power controlling duty cycle on the receiver circuit inside the coherent summations time interval.

2. The electronic circuit claimed in claim 1 wherein said receiver circuit also is operable to perform non-coherent summations of the coherent summations and said power control circuit is concurrently operable to impress a power management control longer than the coherent summations time interval, on both the coherent summations and the non-coherent summations.

3. The electronic circuit claimed in claim 1 wherein said receiver circuit also is operable to perform non-coherent summations of the coherent summations and the noncoherent summations have a non-coherent summations period and said power control circuit is operable to impress a power management control on the non-coherent summations during multiple intervals in the non-coherent summations period.

4. The electronic circuit claimed in claim 3 wherein said power control circuit is dynamically operable to determine the number of the multiple intervals as a function of Doppler difference over time.

5. The electronic circuit claimed in claim 1 wherein said power control circuit is dynamically operable to determine the duty cycle inside the coherent summations time interval as a function of a signal to noise ratio (SNR).

6. The electronic circuit claimed in claim 5 wherein the duty cycle has a power-off time that stepwise increases with SNR.

7. The electronic circuit claimed in claim 1 wherein said power control circuit determines the duty cycle by a process including rank ordering a plurality of signals by their signal to noise ratios.

8. The electronic circuit claimed in claim 1 operable with a number of received signals wherein said power control circuit is operable to dynamically control said receiver circuit to extract a fewer number of the received signals.

9. The electronic circuit claimed in claim 8 wherein said power control circuit is operable to select the fewer number of received signals based on a dilution of precision test relative to a dilution of precision threshold.

10. The electronic circuit claimed in claim 1 wherein said receiver circuit includes an accumulate and dump circuit.

11. The electronic circuit claimed in claim 1 wherein said receiver circuit includes a despreading circuit operable to despread at least one spread spectrum signal.

12. If the electronic circuit claimed in claim 1 wherein said receiver circuit is selected from the group consisting of 1) receiver circuit for satellite signals, 2) cellular receiver circuit, 3) MIMO receiver circuit, 4) wireless local area network receiver circuit, 5) wireless gateway circuit, 6) base station circuit, 7) medical communication circuit.

13. A telecommunications device comprising

a spread spectrum receiver circuit operable to perform coherent summations having a coherent summations time interval;

and

a power control circuit coupled to said receiver circuit and operable to impress a power controlling duty cycle on the spread spectrum receiver circuit inside the coherent summations time interval.

14. The telecommunications device claimed in claim 13 further comprising a position display unit coupled to said spread spectrum receiver circuit and wherein said spread spectrum receiver circuit includes a wireless communications receiving section also coupled to said power control circuit.

15. The telecommunications device claimed in claim 13 wherein said spread spectrum receiver circuit includes multiple channels for receiving satellite signals, and said power control circuit is coupled to control how many of the multiple channels are active.

16. The telecommunications device claimed in claim 13 wherein said spread spectrum receiver circuit includes multiple channels for receiving satellite signals and a processor circuit for executing an application selected from the group comprising 1) position sensing, 2) user kinematics, 3) phase tracking, 4) satellite data decoding, 5) Doppler tracking, 6) attitude sensing, 7) Doppler difference tracking.

17. The telecommunications device claimed in claim 13 wherein said spread spectrum receiver circuit includes a processing circuit and the device further comprises an accelerometer coupled with said processing circuit.

18. The telecommunications device claimed in claim 13 further comprising a cellular communications circuit and wherein said power control circuit is also operable to put said spread spectrum receiver asleep for a period of time, and said cellular communications circuit is operable to perform timekeeping at least when said spread spectrum receiver is asleep and to provide a time update when said spread spectrum receiver wakes up.

19. The telecommunications device claimed in claim 13 wherein said spread spectrum receiver circuit also is operable to perform non-coherent summations of the coherent summations and said power control circuit is concurrently operable to impress a power management control longer than the coherent summations time interval, on both the coherent summations and the non-coherent summations.