On the Design of a Highly Digital Multimode UMTS/GNSS Receiver

This paper introduces a combined UMTS/GNSS receiver architecture with a single reconfigurable Radio Frequency (RF) front-end. After a review of the state-of-the-art for UMTS and NAVSAT receivers, a configurable UMTS/-GNSS architecture is proposed. The investigated concept is based on a Digital-Front-End (DFE) to prevent duplication of hardware, which will result in considerably lower costs. The DFE includes highly reconfigurable filter structures, which enable channel selection for different signal bandwidths according to the configured mode. This decreases the requirements for the analog part because channelization and for GNSS the down conversion to base band are shifted from the analog into the digital domain. The simulation results the considerable performance for a combined UMTS/GNSS receiver using the proposed receiver architecture.