Performance Evaluations of the New GPS L5 and L2 Civil (L2C) Signals

Abstract

: The United States is planning to implement two new civil signals on the GPS satellites in the next few years. The L2 civil (L2C) signal will be implemented beginning with the first Block IIR-M satellite, anticipated to be launched in 2004. The L5 signal will be implemented beginning with the first Block IIF satellite, anticipated to be launched in 2006. Both new civil signals include design features that make them very different from the only existing civil GPS signal—the L1 C/A-code. In a previous paper, signal structure, cross-correlation protection, tracking loop performance, and multipath were evaluated for each signal. This paper presents additional performance evaluations, such as proposed methods of code acquisition, and receiver tracking thresholds considering platform dynamics and receiver oscillator phase noise. The performance trade-offs between carrier loop bandwidth and loop update time, as well as data demodulation performance, are also evaluated.