SummaryIn this paper, the enhancement of global navigation satellite system (GNSS) adaptive acquisition using metaheuristic optimization techniques is proposed. The principal goal of this work is to optimize the cell averaging constant false alarm rate (CA‐CFAR) thresholding in Rayleigh fading channels. In GNSS acquisition, pilot and data blocks may have different thresholds. Thus, the optimization will focus on two scaling factors (
and
). Two fusion rules have been used here (“AND” and “OR”). Due to their performances in different optimization problems, metaheuristics have been chosen to be our tool for solving this kind of problem. Simulation results show that the optimized thresholds have an important influence on the performance of the acquisition system.