An Improved Timing Synchronization Scheme for BOC Signals

Binary offset carrier (BOC) signal synchronization is one of the most important steps to recover the transmitted information in a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) such as Galileo and global positioning system (GPS). Generally, BOC signal synchronization is achieved based on the correlation between the received and locally generated BOC signals. Thus, the multiple side-peaks in BOC autocorrelation are one of the main error sources in synchronizing BOC signals. Recently, a novel correlation function with reduced side-peaks was proposed for BOC signal synchronization by Julien [8]; however, Julien´s correlation function not only still has the side-peaks, but also is only applicable to sine phased BOC(n, n), where n is the ratio of the pseudo random noise (PRN) code rate to 1.023 MHz. In this paper, we propose a new correlation function for BOC signal synchronization, which does not have any side-peaks and is applicable to general types of BOC signals, sine/cosine phased BOC(kn, n), where k is the ratio of a PRN chip duration to the period of a square wave sub-carrier used in BOC modulation. In addition, an efficient correlator structure is presented for generating the proposed correlation function.