In the past six months, global-positioning-system (GPS) equipment has garnered a lot of media attention over possible threats of enemy jamming. To defense-technology experts, however, this supposed security risk doesn't seem to be a cause for major concern. In fact, it appears that the government plans to increase the United States' reliance on GPS rather than decrease it. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) just contracted ParthusCeva (www.parthusceva.com) to design a high-performance, GPS, digital ASIC.

This ASIC is being created to meet the stringent performance criteria that will be required for a next-generation location and tracking system. The contract also includes the design and supply of GPS sensor units (GSUs). These GSUs will create a location technology that is capable of taking GPS measurements at a rate greater than 10 times per second. Such performance far surpasses existing GPS systems. For processing and logging, these location measurements flaunt another advantage: They will be able to be downlinked to ground stations.

The NavStream 3000 technology from ParthusCeva was largely responsible for the winning of this contract. This advanced GPS platform claims to offer unrivaled location performance in terms of accuracy, time-to-location fix, and programmability. It boasts rapid location-acquisition capabilities of less than 3 seconds. With these abilities, the NavStream 3000 helps to push the deployment of GPS technology across multiple markets and applications.

The company's system solution also includes a low-cost ground processor. It comes complete with a reference receiver and software that provide for GPS (C-A code) phase recovery using a standard PC platform. In the DoD's vision, ParthusCeva will utilize its NavStream 3000 GPS technology to create a high-performance global positioning system for military test and research.