Software-based receiver approach for acquiring GPS signals using block repetition method

The Global positioning system (GPS) uses long pseudorandom code sequences at L-band frequencies to provide navigation services to civilian and military users. However, in case of weak signals a long exhaustive search is required at the receiver for signal acquisition. A new acquisition method named Repetitive Block Acquisition (RBA) has been proposed to improve the detection performance and to speed up the acquisition process. The detection performance and computational complexity in terms FFT and IFFT operations of the proposed method is analyzed and is compared with the already existing Zero padding (ZP) and improved zero padding (IZP) methods. It is shown in this paper that the proposed acquisition method provide better detection performance when selecting long coherent lengths for signal acquisition by reducing the computational load of the receiver.