Multi-band GNSS front-end architecture suitable for integrated circuits

This paper introduces a novel multi-band front-end architecture for the new wide-band GNSS signals. It enables the simultaneous reception of both L1/E1 and L5/E5 GPS/Galileo bands with broad bandwidth. The presented topology is suitable for an integrated circuit implementation. A zero-IF and a low-IF path are combined together which has the advantage of needing only one baseband circuitry and of reducing the number of required components, chip area and power consumption considerably. Moreover only one frequency synthesizer is needed to generate all internal frequencies. The proposed topology and its components are presented. The signal degradation in terms of filtering, quantization and superposition loss of the signal paths is simulated, analyzed and interpreted.