New Technique for Weak GNSS Signal Acquisition

The reception of weak GNSS signals is a challenging problem that is becoming ever more common due to the massive use of satellite localization devices. The sensitivity of classic GNSS signal acquisition techniques is limited, among other factors, by the presence of data bits modulation. The focus of this work is to present a novel weak signal acquisition technique that circumvents the data bit transitions problem, producing at the same time a refined frequency estimate and an estimation of the data flank position, in case an actual transition occurs. Besides a description of the algorithm, a statistical analysis in terms of detection and false alarm probabilities is also presented, as well as its comparison to other acquisition techniques. A real time implementation of this weak signal acquisition technique is shown. Some technical details of the implementation and simulation and live signal results are also presented.