In each subframe, each hand-over word (HOW) contains the most significant 17 bits of the TOW count corresponding to the start of the next following subframe. [14] Note that the 2 least significant bits can be safely omitted because one HOW occurs in the navigation message every 6 seconds, which is equal to the resolution of the truncated TOW count thereof. Equivalently, the truncated TOW count is the time duration since the last GPS week start/end to the beginning of the next frame in units of 6 seconds. Wider bandwidth provides a 10× processing gain, provides sharper autocorrelation (in absolute terms, not relative to chip time duration) and requires a higher sampling rate at the receiver. An ephemeris is valid for only four hours; an almanac is valid with little dilution of precision for up to two weeks. [7] The receiver uses the almanac to acquire a set of satellites based on stored time and location. As each satellite is acquired, its ephemeris is decoded so the satellite can be used for navigation. The interface to the User Segment ( GPS receivers) is described in the Interface Control Documents (ICD). The format of civilian signals is described in the Interface Specification (IS) which is a subset of the ICD.

The P-code is a PRN sequence much longer than the C/A code: 6.187104x10 12 chips. Even though the P-code chip rate (10.23 Mchip/s) is ten times that of the C/A code, it repeats only once per week, eliminating range ambiguity. It was assumed that receivers could not directly acquire such a long and fast code so they would first "bootstrap" themselves with the C/A code to acquire the spacecraft ephemerides, produce an approximate time and position fix, and then acquire the P-code to refine the fix. The second advancement is to use forward error correction (FEC) coding on the NAV message itself. Due to the relatively slow transmission rate of NAV data (usually 50 bits per second), small interruptions can have potentially large impacts. Therefore, FEC on the NAV message is a significant improvement in overall signal robustness. Satellites are uniquely identified by a serial number called space vehicle number (SVN) which does not change during its lifetime. In addition, all operating satellites are numbered with a space vehicle identifier (SV ID) and pseudorandom noise number (PRN number) which uniquely identifies the ranging codes that a satellite uses. There is a fixed one-to-one correspondence between SV identifiers and PRN numbers described in the interface specification. [4] Unlike SVNs, the SV ID/PRN number of a satellite may be changed (also changing the ranging codes it uses). At any point in time, any SV ID/PRN number is in use by at most a single satellite. A single SV ID/PRN number may have been used by several satellites at different points in time and a single satellite may have used different SV ID/PRN numbers at different points in time. The current SVNs and PRN numbers for the GPS constellation may be found at NAVCEN.The L1C pilot and data ranging codes are based on a Legendre sequence with length 10 223 used to build an intermediate code (called a Weil code) which is expanded with a fixed 7-bit sequence to the required 10,230 bits. This 10,230-bit sequence is the ranging code and varies between PRN numbers and between the pilot and data components. The ranging codes are described by: [37] L1C i ( t ) = L1C ′ ( t mod 10 230 ) L1C i ′ ( t ′ ) = { W i ( t ′ ) if t ′ < p i ′ S ( t ′ − p i ′ ) if p i ′ ≤ t ′ < p i ′ + 7 W i ( t ′ − 7 ) if t ′ ≥ p i ′ + 7 S = ( 0 , 1 , 1 , 0 , 1 , 0 , 0 ) W i ( n ) = L ( n ) ⊕ L ( ( n + w i ) mod 10 223 ) L ( n ) = { 1 if n ≠ 0 and there is an integer m such that n ≡ m 2 ( mod 10 223 ) 0 otherwise {\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}{\text{L1C}}_{i}(t)&={\text{L1C}}'(t{\bmod {10\,230}})\\{\text{L1C}}'_{i}(t')&={\begin{cases}W_{i}(t')&{\text{ if }}t'

Since the FEC encoded bit stream runs at 2 times the rate than the non FEC encoded bit as already described, then t = ⌊ t ′ 2 ⌋ {\displaystyle t=\left\lfloor {\tfrac {t'}{2}}\right\rfloor } . FEC encoding is performed independently of navigation message boundaries; [27] this follows from the above equations. An immediate effect of having two civilian frequencies being transmitted is the civilian receivers can now directly measure the ionospheric error in the same way as dual frequency P(Y)-code receivers. However, users utilizing the L2C signal alone, can expect 65% more position uncertainty due to ionospheric error than with the L1 signal alone. [28] Military (M-code) [ edit ]L1C consists of a pilot (called L1C P) and a data (called L1C D) component. [35] These components use carriers with the same phase (within a margin of error of 100 milliradians), instead of carriers in quadrature as with L5. [36] The PRN codes are 10,230 chips long and transmitted at 1.023Mchip/s, thus repeating in 10ms. The pilot component is also modulated by an overlay code called L1C O (a secondary code that has a lower rate than the ranging code and is also predefined, like the ranging code). [35] Of the total L1C signal power, 25% is allocated to the data and 75% to the pilot. The modulation technique used is BOC(1,1) for the data signal and TMBOC for the pilot. The time multiplexed binary offset carrier (TMBOC) is BOC(1,1) for all except 4 of 33 cycles, when it switches to BOC(6,1).