Patent attributes
A method of acquiring signals from satellites in a Global Positioning System (GPS) is disclosed. The method includes receiving navigation signals from the satellites of the GPS, down-converting to complex baseband the received navigation signals to form a first signal, digitizing samples of the first signal, nonlinear processing of the digitized samples of the first signal to form a second signal, where the nonlinear processing comprises forming a weighted sum of products of pairs of the digitized samples at different relative delays, in which one of each of the pairs has been complex conjugated, coherent averaging the second signal over integer multiples or submultiples of a spreading sequence period of the navigation signals to form a third signal, performing circular correlation processing of the third signal with a representation of each navigation signal of the navigation signals and determining a timing offset at which a correlated output energy is maximized, based on the circular correlation processing.