Research on acquisition method of GPS software receiver

Acquisition is the first step in the process of GPS Software receiver. In order to track and decode the navigation information, an acquisition method must be used to determine visible satellite. Once the signal is detected, the necessary parameters can be obtained and passed to a tracking loop. In this paper, the fundamental concept in acquisition is firstly presented, and then a few of acquisition methods are introduced, including Serial Search Acquisition, Parallel Frequency Space Search Acquisition and Parallel Code Phase Search Acquisition. At last discussing some important parameters used in the acquisition.