Patent ID: 6912242

Claim:
A low power radio-frequency receiver including an antenna for receiving radio-frequency signals originating from satellites, a reception and shaping stage for the radio-frequency signals provided by the antenna, a correlation stage formed of several channels which each include a correlator, said correlation stage receiving intermediate signals shaped by the reception stage, a microprocessor connected to the correlation stage and adapted to calculate X, Y and Z position, velocity and time data as a function of data extracted, after correlation, from the radio-frequency signals transmitted by the satellites, wherein the intermediate signals provided to the correlation stage are complex signals which have been sampled and quantified in the reception and shaping stage, these complex signals being formed for a 1-bit or more in-phase component and a 1-bit or more quarter-phase signal component, wherein, in each channel, a controller, including a digital signal processing algorithm, is associated with the correlator to allow all synchronisation tasks to be performed autonomously for acquiring and tracking a satellite when the channel is set in operation, and wherein at least a set of data input and output registers is placed at the interface between the correlation stage and the microprocessor in order to receive data, transmitted by the microprocessor to the correlation stage, and data supplied from the correlation stage, said data passing through the set of registers being formed of signals of a frequency lower than or equal to the frequency of message signals, so that the microprocessor can perform the tasks of calculating the position, velocity and time without any intervention as regards the synchronisation and correlation tasks.