STMicroelectronics Unveils a Single-Die Anti-Jamming GNSS Chip Family, Teseo VI
New design puts all the GNSS hardware on a single die, while adding a pair of Arm Cortex-M7 cores for good measure.
STMicroelectronics has announced what it claims is the industry's first quad-band multi-constellation Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), good for centimeter-level accuracy, to be built on a single silicon die — making it smaller and cheaper than its predecessors.
"Our new Teseo VI receivers represent a real breakthrough among positioning engines for several reasons: they are the first to integrate multi-constellation and quad-band signal processing in a single die [and] they are the first to embed a dual-Arm-core architecture enabling both very high performance and ASIL-level safety for assisted and autonomous driving applications," STMicro's Luca Celant explains. "Last but not least, they embed ST's proprietary embedded Non-Volatile-Memory (PCM) [Phase-Change Memory], thus delivering a very integrated, cost-effective, and reliable platform for new precise-positioning solutions."
Primarily targeting automotive advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), but with Celant hoping the parts will also drive "many new use cases being implemented by industrial companies," the new receivers are designed as all-in-one chips with the GNSS hardware integrated on a single die for space and power advantages. In addition to simultaneous multi-constellation operation, good for centimeter-level accuracy, the chips also includes an on-board dual-core Arm Cortex-M7 CPU cluster — designed to handle control of the receiver on-chip, with the automotive-focused Teseo APP2 STA9200MA going a step further to run the two cores in lockstep for redundancy in safety-critical applications.
The company has also claimed that the new receivers include the ability to track L1 and L5 GNSS signals separately — delivering improved protections against jamming and spoofing compared to earlier devices that rely on the presence of the older L1 signals to lock on to the newer L5 signals, with the Teseo VI family able to operate in L5-only mode. "Additionally," STMicro claims, "L5 is so robust some estimate it to be 30 times harder to jam than L1."
More information on the new parts is available on the STMicro website; at the time of writing the company had not disclosed pricing, but is making samples available upon request.