Space-integrating acousto-optic processor for rapid Global Positioning System signal acquisition

A space-integrating acousto-optic processor conceived for Global Positioning System (GPS) signal acquisition is presented. The main advantage of the proposed system, as compared with traditional ones, is that only one parameter estimation, Doppler shift, is needed, instead of two. The GPS clear and acquisition (C/A) codes are matched to a paratellurite Bragg cell in time-compression hardware with a compression factor of 20. This technique is further exploited for accelerating Doppler estimation. Experimental results show an acquisition time of at most 1 ms.