A new algorithm for fine acquisition of GPS carrier frequency

Design of a GPS signal acquisition algorithm is a trade-off between improvement of the acquisition frequency resolution and reduction in the acquisition time. A new algorithm is proposed to acquire the carrier frequency accurately by correlation of the GPS signal after completion of the coarse acquisition of the signals. The CA code in a period of 1 ms is stripped off first. Then, several local replica carriers are generated and mixed with the CA-code-stripped data. Finally, the mixed data are integrated to detect the carrier frequency accurately. By analyzing the correlated integration result, the algorithm performance is evaluated on the aspects of the computational load, the effects of the carrier-to-noise ratio, and the navigation data transition. Performance of the proposed method is verified by simulations and experiments.