# Comparison of L1 and L5 Bands GNSS Signals Acquisition
## 5 Conclusions
Table 10 and Figure 12 provide the ratio between the complexity of each of them considering the processing time of one frequency bin and the memory requirements, and Table 12 provides the final ratio of complexity which takes also into account the average number of frequency bins browsed until the signal detection. The developments have been validated by Matlab simulations (Table 13). The acquisition of the L5 signal is most of the time more complex. Without assistance, if the sensitivity or the coherent integration time is moderate, acquiring the L5 signal is much more complex (ratios higher than 50 most often, i.e., it may require 50 times more memory, or have a processing time that is 50 times longer, or e.g., 10 times more memory, with a 5 times longer processing time). For very high sensitivity with long coherent integration time, the complexity ratio for one frequency bin is smaller, but still to the detriment of the L5 signal, except at \(-160\) dBm. With assistance, the complexity ratios are smaller for any sensitivity, but only those for unlimited coherent integration time are of interests, since the ratios for one frequency bin become between 0.1 and 4.6. i.e., the GPS L5 signal acquisition may be significantly less complex than the GPS L1 C/A signal one in some high sensitivity cases if only one or few frequency bins that have to be tested (which would require very accurate Doppler assistance). When considering more frequency bins, the L5 signal is more complex to acquire, except few cases. For Galileo, the E1 signal has been compared with itself first, considering two different sampling frequencies, 4.096 MHz and 6.144 MHz, the first one being close to the minimum and the second one offering the same code loss as a BPSK signals sampled at about twice the chipping rate. Table 19 provides the ratios of complexity, and shows using a sampling frequency of 6.144 triples the complexity most of the time. It is therefore recommended to use the minimum sampling frequency of 4.096 MHz and use techniques to remove the side peaks of the main correlation peak. Then, the E1 and E5 signals have been compared. Table 20 and Figure 14 provide the ratios of complexity for one frequency bin, and shows that the acquisition of the E5 signal is always more complex. Without assistance, acquiring the E5 signal is much more complex (ratios higher between 25 and 45). With assistance, the complexity ratios are smaller for any sensitivity, the lowest ratios being for unlimited coherent integration times; but the minimum ratio is still around 6 (without considering the input memory, else the ratios increase with the sensitivity), which makes the Galileo E5 signal acquisition significantly more complex than the Galileo E1 one even in the best case. Considering more frequency bins reduces these ratios (Table 22), however the E5 signal is still more complex to acquire. In conclusion, the GPS and Galileo L5 band signals are overall more complex to acquire than the GPS and Galileo L1 band signals, although in some particular cases the difference may be negligible or limited. In particular, the L5 signal could show better performance in presence of very accurate assistance to avoid a significant increase of the number of frequency bins when using very long coherent integration times. The methodology and the expressions and developments provided in this paper can be easily used to compare the complexity of current or future GNSS signals in specific cases for a wide variety of hardware implementations. The spreadsheets used to obtain Tables 3-22 excepted Table 13 are available online at [[http://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/18/9/2779/s1](http://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/18/9/2779/s1)]([http://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/18/9/2779/s1](http://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/18/9/2779/s1)). [PERSON] initiated the idea of making this comparison; [PERSON] carried out the derivations and comparisons, and wrote the paper; and [PERSON] supervised the work. All of the authors contributed to discussions and revisions of the manuscript.