Fast acquisition of GPS L5 PRN and NH code using L1 signal for software receivers

Abstract

As an effort towards the modernization of GPS, the L5 signal has been transmitted from Block IIF satellites since 2010. The spreading code of the L5 signal is 10 times faster than that of the L1 signal, which makes the acquisition processing time of L5 considerably longer than that of L1. To reduce the L5 acquisition time, we propose a fast L5 acquisition method using the L1 signal, and a new NH code phase search method. We compare the acquisition times between the case of using L5 only and that of using the L1 acquisition. We then present the probability of detection for the proposed acquisition method and the new NH code phase detection method using Monte Carlo simulation in order to analyze the performance of the proposed methods.