System and method to determine the location of a receiver are provided.
The received signal is decomposed into signal chunks that are then
correlated with the reference signals of the transmitting sources. In
some embodiments, the signal chunks may be shorter than the period of the
reference signals. For each signal source, a grid of correlation values
is constructed containing one column of correlation values for each
signal chunk. Each column contains correlation values for several
code-phases. Probes are executed in the grid to acquire the
location-determining signals. In some embodiments, a probe includes
calculating the fourier transform of a row in the grid, yielding
correlation values associated with a refined set of frequency values.
Potential acquisitions are verified by processing increasing portions of
the received signal. Confirmed acquisition may be used to aid further
acquisitions. Some embodiments eventually compress the received signal
down to a one period duration by means of an ultra-stacking method.
Additional verification, comprising multi-peak test and multi-path tests,
may be performed on the correlation magnitude curve obtained from the
ultra-stacked signal. Finally, refined code-phase values are extracted
from these correlation magnitude curves.