System and method for acquiring weak signals in a global positioning satellite system

摘要

A method of acquiring a weak signal includes selecting a first predetection integration time (PIT) interval for processing a digital intermediate frequency (IF) signal, selecting a number of data bit edges within the PIT, computing a plurality of coherent integrations for each data bit edge, selecting a coherent integration, which corresponds to a most likely data combination for each data bit edge, from the plurality of coherent integrations, updating an incoherent integration total for each data bit edge with the coherent integration corresponding to the selected most likely data bit combination for each data bit edge, comparing the incoherent integration total for each data bit edge with a threshold after a predetermined number of steps of the coherent integration computations and incoherent integration total updates, and identifying a code delay from the incoherent integration. The method may also include determining a code delay from an estimated Doppler shift corresponding to the identified code delay. In this method, the coherent integrations are computed using a circular correlation technique that is performed in a manner so the coherent integrations are not independent from one another in successive steps. Thus, computational efficiencies may be gained from subsequent uses of coherent integrations computed during previous steps. The circular correlation is preferably performed over intervals corresponding to the separation between data bit edges.