Exploiting the Secondary Codes to Improve Signal Acquisition Performance in Galileo Receivers

In GNSS, longer integrations are required to obtain better signal-to-noise ratio during the signal synchronization process. However the presence of secondary codes on the top of primary codes puts a constraint on the coherent integration duration for pilot channels in a similar way to the effect of data bits in data-carrying channels. In this paper we explore the problem of coherent integration over periods longer than one primary code length and the acquisition of secondary code chip position. We propose an acquisition engine architecture which can handle both these problems together.