Design and assessment of composite civil moderate code structure for efficient global positioning system L2 civil signal acquisition

In global positioning system modernisation, a new civil signal namely L2C signal has been broadcast since 2005. Compared with the widely used C/A code signal, although the new signal provides lots of advantages such as better acquisition and tracking performances, the used civil moderate (CM) code and civil long code have much longer periods than C/A code and they make L2C signal acquisition challengeable. Although previous acquisition methods are effective, their computational complexities are still high. To this end, in the study, a composite CM (CCM) code structure is developed by reconstructing the previous return-to-zero CM (RZCM) code through the previous folding technique. Then the CCM code is comprehensively assessed. Compared with the RZCM code, the developed CCM code has following advantages. It can be implemented by small scale FFT block, which is desirable for resource-limited L2C receivers; it is more robust against navigation data and carrier Doppler, and performs more reliable detection performance; for normally received L2C signal, which is usually not <;42 dBHz, it spends less time on acquisition. Theoretical and simulation results demonstrate the advantages.