Analysis of finite word-length effect on FFT acquisition algorithm for GPS signal

System performances and resources requirement were affected directly by the selection of word length when FFT acquisition algorithm was realized in hardware. A new analysis method based on theoretical statistic models was proposed to analyze finite word-length effect, instead of the complicated and time-consuming sample statistics process. The influence on GPS signal carrier-to-noise ratio was analyzed respectively, using quantization errors models under the simplified conditions based on GPS signal characters. We got several word-length schemes for different application requirements. The agreement of the analysis results with the hardware simulation results indicates this method could be used to estimate the system's finite word-length effect simply and effectively at engineering analyses.