Noncoherent Integrations for GNSS Detection: Analysis and Comparisons

A new approach is presented for assessing the effectiveness of noncoherent integrations in Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signal acquisition. In the light of the renewed interest in weak signal detection and considering the limitations of coherent integration, it is critical to possess a tool in order to predict and evaluate the impact of noncoherent integrations on signal detection performance. The challenge is the statistic of the noise component, preventing the computation of exact signal-to-noise (SNR) ratios when combinations of coherent and noncoherent integrations are utilized. An original approach is presented to enable this comparison through an equivalent area criterion based on the popular receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. The equivalent area approach is compared with past techniques, and the performance of each method is analyzed for highlighting the effectiveness of the proposed criterion.