Patent ID: 7664206

Claim:
A radio frequency integrated circuit for a global positioning system (GPS) application, comprising: a mixer which down-converts received GPS signals to a predetermined intermediate frequency that is less than 4f o , where f o is 1.023 MHz, to produce intermediate frequency GPS signals; an intermediate frequency filter which receives and filters the intermediate frequency GPS signals to produce filtered intermediate frequency GPS signals; an automatic gain control circuit which amplifies the filtered intermediate frequency GPS signals to provide amplified, filtered intermediate frequency GPS signals; an analog-to-digital converter which digitizes the amplified, filtered intermediate frequency GPS signals at a predetermined sampling rate to provide samples of a predetermined number of bits; and an interface which provides the samples to a base band processor over a shared serial bus, wherein the radio frequency integrated circuit (RFIC) is configurable through the serial bus into: a) an ON state wherein the RFIC controls the serial bus to provide the samples to the base band processor, and b) a STANDBY state wherein the RFIC does not control the serial bus, and wherein the base band processor is a general-purpose microprocessor.