For the ranging codes and navigation message to travel from the satellite to the receiver, they must be modulated onto a carrier wave. In the case of the original GPS design, two frequencies are utilized; one at 1575.42 MHz (10.23MHz × 154) called L1; and a second at 1227.60MHz (10.23MHz × 120), called L2.

The M-code is transmitted in the same L1 and L2 frequencies already in use by the previous military code, the P(Y)-code. The new signal is shaped to place most of its energy at the edges (away from the existing P(Y) and C/A carriers). It does not work at every satellite, and M-code was switched off for SVN62/PRN25 on 05 April 2011. [29] The delay for PRN numbers 34 and 37 is the same; therefore their C/A codes are identical and are not transmitted at the same time [5] (it may make one or both of those signals unusable due to mutual interference depending on the relative power levels received on each GPS receiver). Unlike the C/A code, L2C contains two distinct PRN code sequences to provide ranging information; the civil-moderate code (called CM), and the civil-long length code (called CL). The CM code is 10,230 chips long, repeating every 20 ms. The CL code is 767,250 chips long, repeating every 1,500 ms. Each signal is transmitted at 511,500 chips per second ( chip/s); however, they are multiplexed together to form a 1,023,000-chip/s signal. Whereas the C/A PRNs are unique for each satellite, each satellite transmits a different segment of a master P-code sequence approximately 2.35x10 14 chips long (235,000,000,000,000 chips). Each satellite repeatedly transmits its assigned segment of the master code, restarting every Sunday at 00:00:00 GPS time. (The GPS epoch was Sunday January 6, 1980 at 00:00:00 UTC, but GPS does not follow UTC leap seconds. So GPS time is ahead of UTC by an integer number of seconds.) X 1 ( t ) = d ( t ) ⊕ d ( t − 2 ) ⊕ d ( t − 3 ) ⊕ d ( t − 5 ) ⊕ d ( t − 6 ) X 2 ( t ) = d ( t ) ⊕ d ( t − 1 ) ⊕ d ( t − 2 ) ⊕ d ( t − 3 ) ⊕ d ( t − 6 ) d ′ ( t ′ ) = { X 1 ( t ′ 2 ) if t ′ ≡ 0 ( mod 2 ) X 2 ( t ′ − 1 2 ) if t ′ ≡ 1 ( mod 2 ) {\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}X_{1}(t)&=d(t)\oplus d(t-2)\oplus d(t-3)\oplus d(t-5)\oplus d(t-6)\\X_{2}(t)&=d(t)\oplus d(t-1)\oplus d(t-2)\oplus d(t-3)\oplus d(t-6)\\d'(t')&={\begin{cases}X_{1}\left({\frac {t'}{2}}\right)&{\text{if }}t'\equiv 0{\pmod {2}}\\X_{2}\left({\frac {t'-1}{2}}\right)&{\text{if }}t'\equiv 1{\pmod {2}}\\\end{cases}}\end{aligned}}}The L5 band provides additional robustness in the form of interference mitigation, the band being internationally protected, redundancy with existing bands, geostationary satellite augmentation, and ground-based augmentation. The added robustness of this band also benefits terrestrial applications. [30] 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. The P code is public, so to prevent unauthorized users from using or potentially interfering with it through spoofing, the P-code is XORed with W-code, a cryptographically generated sequence, to produce the Y-code. The Y-code is what the satellites have been transmitting since the anti-spoofing module was set to the "on" state. The encrypted signal is referred to as the P(Y)-code. It uses forward error correction (FEC) provided by a rate 1/2 convolutional code, so while the navigation message is 25-bit/s, a 50-bit/s signal is transmitted.

The modulation method is binary offset carrier, using a 10.23MHz subcarrier against the 5.115MHz code. This signal will have an overall bandwidth of approximately 24MHz, with significantly separated sideband lobes. The sidebands can be used to improve signal reception.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. Having reached full operational capability on July 17, 1995 [20] the GPS system had completed its original design goals. However, additional advances in technology and new demands on the existing system led to the effort to "modernize" the GPS system. Announcements from the Vice President and the White House in 1998 heralded the beginning of these changes and in 2000, the U.S. Congress reaffirmed the effort, referred to as GPS III. 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. Besides redundancy and increased resistance to jamming, a critical benefit of having two frequencies transmitted from one satellite is the ability to measure directly, and therefore remove, the ionospheric delay error for that satellite. Without such a measurement, a GPS receiver must use a generic model or receive ionospheric corrections from another source (such as the Wide Area Augmentation System or WAAS). Advances in the technology used on both the GPS satellites and the GPS receivers has made ionospheric delay the largest remaining source of error in the signal. A receiver capable of performing this measurement can be significantly more accurate and is typically referred to as a dual frequency receiver. 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.

CNAV messages begin and end at start/end of GPS week plus an integer multiple of 12 seconds. [26] Specifically, the beginning of the first bit (with convolution encoding already applied) to contain information about a message matches the aforesaid synchronization. CNAV messages begin with an 8-bit preamble which is a fixed bit pattern and whose purpose is to enable the receiver to detect the beginning of a message. 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'

There are two navigation message types: LNAV-L is used by satellites with PRN numbers 1 to 32 (called lower PRN numbers) and LNAV-U is used by satellites with PRN numbers 33 to 63 (called upper PRN numbers). [9] The 2 types use very similar formats. Subframes 1 to 3 are the same [10] while subframes 4 and 5 are almost the same. Each message type contains almanac data for all satellites using the same navigation message type, but not the other. In addition to the PRN ranging codes, a receiver needs to know the time and position of each active satellite. GPS encodes this information into the navigation message and modulates it onto both the C/A and P(Y) ranging codes at 50bit/s. The navigation message format described in this section is called LNAV data (for legacy navigation). Each frame contains (in subframe 1) the 10 least significant bits of the corresponding GPS week number. [15] Note that each frame is entirely within one GPS week because GPS frames do not cross GPS week boundaries. [16] Since rollover occurs every 1,024 GPS weeks (approximately every 19.6 years; 1,024 is 2 10), a receiver that computes current calendar dates needs to deduce the upper week number bits or obtain them from a different source. One possible method is for the receiver to save its current date in memory when shut down, and when powered on, assume that the newly decoded truncated week number corresponds to the period of 1,024 weeks that starts at the last saved date. This method correctly deduces the full week number if the receiver is never allowed to remain shut down (or without a time and position fix) for more than 1,024 weeks (~19.6 years). The GPS satellites (called space vehicles in the GPS interface specification documents) transmit simultaneously several ranging codes and navigation data using binary phase-shift keying (BPSK).GPS time is expressed with a resolution of 1.5 seconds as a week number and a time of week count (TOW). [13] Its zero point (week 0, TOW 0) is defined to be 1980-01-06T00:00Z. The TOW count is a value ranging from 0 to 403,199 whose meaning is the number of 1.5 second periods elapsed since the beginning of the GPS week. Expressing TOW count thus requires 19 bits (2 19=524,288). GPS time is a continuous time scale in that it does not include leap seconds; therefore the start/end of GPS weeks may differ from that of the corresponding UTC day by an integer number of seconds. A and B are maximal length LFSRs. The modulo operations correspond to resets. Note that both are reset each millisecond (synchronized with C/A code epochs). In addition, the extra modulo operation in the description of A is due to the fact it is reset 1 cycle before its natural period (which is 8,191) so that the next repetition becomes offset by 1 cycle with respect to B [32] (otherwise, since both sequences would repeat, I5 and Q5 would repeat within any 1ms period as well, degrading correlation characteristics). GPS signals include ranging signals, used to measure the distance to the satellite, and navigation messages. The navigation messages include ephemeris data, used in trilateration to calculate the position of each satellite in orbit, and information about the time and status of the entire satellite constellation, called the almanac. 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).