GPS satellite navigation chip makers are battling to provide the smallest GPS chips for mobile phones.

Working with Infineon, Global Locate has launched one of the smallest assisted-GPS system for cellphones, with the Hammerhead II single die receiver measuring just 3.74 mm x 3.59 mm x 0.6 mm. This combines LNA, RF Tuner, PLL and baseband functions into a single die CMOS chip and provides sensitivity to -160dBm, and position fix times as fast as 1s.

It has worked with Philips spin off NXP Semiconductor to launch a reference design last week based the NXP Nexperia cellular system solution 7210 for EDGE/UMTS handsets which will be available in the second quarter. A-GPS uses the processing power in the phone for some of the calculations, making the chips smaller and cheaper.

“Incorporating Global Locate's AGPS protocol stack and chips into our 2G/3G platforms and performing interoperability tests with major infrastructure vendors over the next few months will allow handset manufacturers to significantly reduce their engineering efforts and shorten the time to market, while enabling emergency call and location-based services,” said Marc Humbert, Product Marketing Manager at NXP Semiconductors.

At the same time arch competitor SiRF Technology has launched SiRFstarIII GSD3t, a multimode GPS processor in a 10mm2 footprint.

This combines the radio frequency, as well as analogue and signal processing functionalities in a single 90 nm RFCMOS die.

It delivers the same -160 dBm signal acquisition in AGPS mode again under 60s and better than -160 dBm signal tracking capability to provide location data under the harshest outdoor conditions, and even in many indoor locations.

“SiRF once again leads the industry in using architectural innovations and advanced technology to address the needs of our customers for adding GPS to high volume, cost and space sensitive platforms, without making any performance compromises,” said Kanwar Chadha, founder and vice president of marketing for SiRF.

The two companies are suing each other over four of SiRF's patents.

Hammerhead II