A partial-code serial search algorithm for improved performance of C/A code acquisition

Intelligent robotic navigation requires precise positioning information. The Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) enables such navigation by providing precise timing, velocity and positioning information to any adequately equipped receiver world-wide. A core capability of these receivers is to identify all visible satellites from a snapshot of received signal. This identification process, called signal acquisition, must be performed in shortest possible time in practical solutions. Conventionally search for the desired satellite in a serial fashion which involves large number of computations. Recently Fourier transform based methods were proposed to speed up the processing. However such a solution requires complex domain signal processing. We propose a partial-code serial search algorithm that significantly reduces the computational time with same reliability of acquisition results.