FFT and PLL based GPS signal processing for Software GPS Receiver

This paper presents FFT and PLL based GPS signal acquisition and tracking algorithms for a software GPS receiver. Conventional hardware based acquisition and tracking have some restrictions in processing signal with poor signal to noise ratio. The FFT of digitized local signals of multiple carrier frequencies for a specified Doppler band are pre-computed and are circular correlated with the digitized incoming signal from RF-front-end in an organized computational order. The global maximum of the correlation is associated with the closest estimates of the Doppler shift and the code shift. PLL refines the estimates to track the signal. Doppler information from an external source can readily be integrated to narrow down the frequency band for correlation and is especially useful for tracking in a high dynamic navigation situation. The performance of the proposed algorithms is evaluated through post processing of the IF signals acquired from a commercial hardware GPS receiver.