US 8,576,895 B2 · Rapid acquisition methods and apparatus for GPS signals

Abstract

A method and apparatus for receiving a signal from transmitters such as GPS satellites, for fixing the location of the receiver. Each of the transmitted signals includes a unique periodically-repeating sequence. A received signal is stored by the receiver for at least two repetitions of the periodically-repeating sequence. FFT operations are performed, and the resulting data frequency samples are pruned responsive to a hypothesized residual frequency, a procedure which significantly reduces the total number of subsequent calculations and therefore significantly reduces processing time. A correlation series is determined from the pruned samples and reference frequency samples corresponding to a hypothesized transmitter. If a match is found in the examination of this series, a code phase offset is determined; if not the process is repeated with another hypothesized residual frequency. Multiple correlation series similarly obtained may also be incoherently combined prior to this examination.

Claims8

Dependent claims

A non-transitory machine-readable medium comprising instructions, which when executed by a machine, perform steps in a method for acquiring transmissions from a transmitter, wherein the transmissions include a periodically-repeating pseudonoise (PN) sequence, and wherein, the steps, upon execution, cause the machine to:

receive a data block of samples, from the transmitter, comprising an integer number of repetitions of a received PN sequence;
compute frequency data values from the data block of samples;
provide a set of reference frequency values thereby hypothesizing a reference PN sequence of the transmitter;
hypothesize a residual frequency;
prune the frequency data values, based on the residual frequency and based on the integer number of repetitions, to provide a subset of the frequency data values;
compute a correlation series using the subset of the frequency data values and the set of reference frequency values;
and
determine whether a matched condition occurs between the received PN sequence and the reference PN sequence using the correlation series.

5 more elements

A non-transitory machine-readable medium comprising instructions, which when executed by a machine, perform steps in a method for receiving a signal with a receiver, said signal transmitted at a predetermined carrier frequency from one of a plurality of transmitters, said signal including a waveform modulated according to periodically-repeating pseudonoise (PN) sequence that uniquely identifies the transmitter that sent the signal, said signal used in determining a location of the receiver, and wherein, the steps, upon execution, cause a machine to:

receive, at the receiver, electromagnetic energy in the vicinity of said carrier frequency, and digitizing said energy for a predefined period of time,
hypothesize one of said plurality of transmitters and an associated hypothesized signal and provide a set of reference frequency samples corresponding to said hypothesized signal;
hypothesize a first residual frequency;
select from said digitized energy a first subset of data of length at least equal to two repetitions of said periodically-repeating PN sequences, thereby defining a first data block;
responsive to said first data block, calculate a first set of data frequency samples;
prune said first set of data frequency samples responsive to said hypothesized first residual frequency to provide a periodically-spaced first subset of said data frequency samples, wherein said periodically-spaced first subset includes a plurality of samples having indices spaced relative to one another by an integer K, wherein K is the number of PN sequences in said first data block;
compute a first correlation series from said periodically-spaced first subset of said first set of data frequency samples and said set of reference frequency samples;
compute a first final correlation series comprising at least said first correlation series;
and
examine said first final correlation series to determine whether a matched condition occurs between said transmitted signal and said hypothesized signal.

7 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Rapid acquisition methods and apparatus for GPS signals

Life of this patent

Rapid acquisition methods and apparatus for GPS signals

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims8