Abstract Global navigation satellite system (GNSS) like signal has been widely used in ground‐based navigation as an augment of global navigation satellite system system. The binary‐coded symbols (BCS) spreading modulation has been successfully used in global navigation satellite system systems to pursue the frequency reuses, and it is proved to have better ranging performance if the potential ambiguity risk is avoided. In the paper, the BCS coding is designed for ground‐based transmitter with the comprehensive consideration of potential tracking accuracy, anti‐multipath performance and ambiguous acquisition probability. The binary‐coded symbol codes are obtained by optimising the corresponding performance with the condition of an acceptable false‐lock probability. In this way, a moderate performance tracking performance can be achieved when the designed binary‐coded symbol codes are adopted with the global navigation satellite system‐like signal. The performance of the proposed signal is analysed in theory and assessed by computer simulation, and the unambiguous two‐dimensional processing is given as an alternative for the proposed binary‐coded symbol signals. The result indicates the proposed binary‐coded symbol codes obtain obvious advantages over the traditional binary phase shift keying (BPSK) modulation and the existing binary‐coded symbol coding schemes when applied with ground‐based occasions.