High sensitivity global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receiver platform having DMA controller for transferring between internal and external memory

A system platform comprising:

• a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receiver having a plurality of subfunctions to successively acquire and extract navigation data from a received GNSS signal, wherein the GNSS receiver device includes internal on-chip memory;
• a memory external to the GNSS receiver, wherein the memory is on a separate chip from the GNSS receiver;
• and a data transfer module for transferring data corresponding to the received GNSS signal between the internal memory of the GNSS receiver and the external memory, wherein the data transfer module is operative to use direct memory access (DMA) to transfer the data corresponding to the received GNSS signal between the internal memory and the external memory during successive processing of the received GNSS signal by each of the plurality of subfunctions such that data that has been processed by a first one of the subfunctions and transferred to the external memory by the data transfer module using DMA is further transferred by the data transfer module using DMA to the internal memory for processing by a second subsequent one of the subfunctions and wherein the first and second subfunctions process the data so as to acquire and extract navigation data from the same corresponding received GNSS signal.