Irish chip design firm ParthusCeva has won a major contract from the US government for the design of a high performance global positioning system (GPS) for military test and research.
The project will be based on ParthusCeva’s NavStream 3000 technology, an advanced GPS platform in terms of accuracy, time-to-location fix and programmability, which can be deployed across multiple markets and applications.
It is understood that under the agreement with the US Department of Defence, ParthusCeva will design a high performance GPS digital ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) to meet the tough performance criteria required by the military for a next-generation location and tracking system.
The contract includes the design and supply of GPS sensor units which will create a location technology capable of taking GPS measurements at a rate greater than 10 times per second, a performance that currently surpasses other contemporary GPS systems, and for these location measurements to be down-linked to ground stations for processing and logging.
Part of the solution will include a low-cost ground processor complete with reference receiver and software that provides for GPS phase recovery and monitoring using a standard PC platform.
“We chose to work with ParthusCeva because of NavStream’s unique accuracy and rapid location acquisition capabilities of less than three seconds,” said Dave Powell, of the US Department of Defence’s Joint Advanced Missile Instrumentation Project (JAMI) deputy director.
ParthusCeva was created as a result of the merger between Dublin-based Parthus Technologies and California-based Ceva, formerly the licensing division of DSP Group. In 2001, more than 80 million silicon chips powered by ParthusCeva were shipped to industries ranging from wireless and consumer multimedia to automotives and networking.
By John Kennedy
