Performance Evaluation of Weil Codes and Gold Codes for Application in Future Navigation Signals

Pseudorandom Noise (PRN) codes are the most significant part of Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) based systems such as Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). The characteristics of the PRN codes have a substantial effect on acquisition, tracking and the navigation solution. As a result, investigating the properties of the ranging codes might deliver theoretical justification for exploring ranging codes with improved performance for future GNSS signal structures. Therefore, in this paper, the performance of Weil codes and the Gold codes are compared to explore the advantages for application in future navigation signals. The PRN codes of 63 pairs of pilot/data of B1C and B2a signals are analysed in terms of in-band and out-band auto-correlation and cross-correlation functions and are compared with Welch bound. The results show that the statistical parameters of Weil codes are closer to Welch bound compared to Gold codes, indicating the capability of Weil codes to acquire weaker signals even in the presence of strong interference.