ITC/USA 2005 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-First Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 24-27, 2005 / Riviera Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / In GPS receiver the acquisition process generates two important parameters: the initial carrier frequency and the initial phase of the C/A code. In this paper two different methods for acquisition are mainly discussed: serial search in the time domain and FFT search in the frequency domain. Frequency domain acquisition involves using the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) to convert the GPS signals into the frequency domain. One fast and easy-to-implement algorithm for averaging correlation is implemented and explained in detail. The FFT search method is both simulated in Matlab and evaluated in Altera Stratix DSP development board.