An Integration of GPS with INS Sensors for Precise Long-Baseline Kinematic Positioning

Integrating the precise GPS carrier phases and INS sensor technologies is a methodology that has been applied indispensably in those application fields requiring accurate and reliable position, velocity, and attitude information. However, conventional integration approaches with a single GPS reference station may not fulfil the demanding performance requirements, especially in the position component, when the baseline length between the reference station and mobile user’s GPS receiver is greater than a few tens of kilometres. This is because their positioning performance is primarily dependent on the common mode of errors of GPS measurements. To address this constraint, a novel GPS/INS integration scheme using multiple GPS reference stations is proposed here that can improve its positioning accuracy by modelling the baseline-dependent errors. In this paper, the technical issues concerned with implementing the proposed scheme are described, including the GPS network correction modelling and integrated GPS/INS filtering. In addition, the results from the processing of the simulated measurements are presented to characterise the system performance. As a result, it has been established that the integration of GPS/INS with multiple reference stations would make it possible to ensure centimetre-level positioning accuracy, even if the baseline length reaches about 100 km

Effect of spatial correlation on the performances of modernized GPS and Galileo in relative positioning

In the context of processing GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) data, it is known that the estimation of the ionospheric delays decreases the strength of the observation model and makes significant the time required to fix the ambiguities namely in case of long baselines. However, considering the double-differenced (DD) ionospheric delays as stochastic quantities, the redundancy in this case increases and leads to the reduction of time of fixing the ambiguities. The approach developed in the present paper makes two considerations: 1) the DD ionospheric delays are assumed as stochastic quantities and, 2) the spatial correlation of errors is accounted for based on a simple model of correlation. A simulation is made and aims to study the effect of these two mentioned considerations on the performances of the three multifrequency GNSSs; modernized GPS, Galileo and BDS which are not yet in full capability. For each GNSS, dual-frequency combinations of frequencies as well as triple-frequency combination are investigated in the simulation. The performances studied include: the time to fix the ambiguities with high success rate and the precision of coordinates in static relative positioning with varying baseline length. A method is developed to derive what we call the spatial correlation model which approximately gives the covariance between the individual errors belonging to two stations. Furthermore, the stochastic models that follow from accounting and neglecting the spatial correlation are developed. The LAMBDA (Least-squares Ambiguity Decorrelation Adjustment) method is implemented for ambiguity decorrelation. The results show that the time to fix the ambiguities caused by accounting the spatial correlation is less than the time of fix without the spatial correlation. Also, a slight superiority of Galileo in terms of performances is seen compared to the other GNSS. For all the dualfrequency combinations investigated, when processing a baseline length of 500 km with accounted spatial correlation, the time needed to successfully fix the ambiguities lies between 5 and 9 min, whereas it becomes only between 2.5 and 3 min for all the triple-frequency combinations, this is with a sampling time of 5 s. In addition, for all different combinations, the coordinates precision is less than 8 mm even for 500 km. We think that these high performances result from: 1) the precise codes of future GNSS signals, 2) the high redundancy in the observations equation and, 3) taking into account the spatial correlation in the definition of the stochastic model

Performance of ionospheric maps in support of long baseline GNSS kinematic positioning at low latitudes

Ionospheric scintillation occurs mainly at high and low latitude regions of the Earth and may impose serious degradation on GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) functionality. The Brazilian territory sits on one of the most affected areas of the globe, where the ionosphere behaves very unpredictably, with strong scintillation frequently occurring in the local postsunset hours. The correlation between scintillation occurrence and sharp variations in the ionospheric total electron content (TEC) in Brazil is demonstrated in Spogli et al. (2013). The compounded effect of these associated ionospheric disturbances on long baseline GNSS kinematic positioning is studied in this paper, in particular when ionospheric maps are used to aid the positioning solution. The experiments have been conducted using data from GNSS reference stations in Brazil. The use of a regional TEC map generated under the CALIBRA (Countering GNSS high-Accuracy applications Limitations due to Ionospheric disturbances in BRAzil) project, referred to as CALIBRA TEC map (CTM), was compared to the use of the Global Ionosphere Map (GIM), provided by the International GNSS Service (IGS). Results show that the use of the CTM greatly improves the kinematic positioning solution as compared with that using the GIM, especially under disturbed ionospheric conditions. Additionally, different hypotheses were tested regarding the precision of the TEC values obtained from ionospheric maps, and its effect on the long baseline kinematic solution evaluated. Finally, this study compares two interpolation methods for ionospheric maps, namely, the Inverse Distance Weight and the Natural Neighbor

Precise Point Positioning Augmentation for Various Grades of Global Navigation Satellite System Hardware

The next generation of low-cost, dual-frequency, multi-constellation GNSS receivers, boards, chips and antennas are now quickly entering the market, offering to disrupt portions of the precise GNSS positioning industry with much lower cost hardware and promising to provide precise positioning to a wide range of consumers. The presented work provides a timely, novel and thorough investigation into the positioning performance promise. A systematic and rigorous set of experiments has been carried-out, collecting measurements from a wide array of low-cost, dual-frequency, multi-constellation GNSS boards, chips and antennas introduced in late 2018 and early 2019. These sensors range from dual-frequency, multi-constellation chips in smartphones to stand-alone chips and boards. In order to be comprehensive and realistic, these experiments were conducted in a number of static and kinematic benign, typical, suburban and urban environments. In terms of processing raw measurements from these sensors, the Precise Point Positioning (PPP) GNSS measurement processing mode was used. PPP has become the defacto GNSS positioning and navigation technique for scientific and engineering applications that require dm- to cm-level positioning in remote areas with few obstructions and provides for very efficient worldwide, wide-array augmentation corrections. To enhance solution accuracy, novel contributions were made through atmospheric constraints and the use of dual- and triple-frequency measurements to significantly reduce PPP convergence period. Applying PPP correction augmentations to smartphones and recently released low-cost equipment, novel analyses were made with significantly improved solution accuracy. Significant customization to the York-PPP GNSS measurement processing engine was necessary, especially in the quality control and residual analysis functions, in order to successfully process these datasets. Results for new smartphone sensors show positioning performance is typically at the few dm-level with a convergence period of approximately 40 minutes, which is 1 to 2 orders of magnitude better than standard point positioning. The GNSS chips and boards combined with higher-quality antennas produce positioning performance approaching geodetic quality. Under ideal conditions, carrier-phase ambiguities are resolvable. The results presented show a novel perspective and are very promising for the use of PPP (as well as RTK) in next-generation GNSS sensors for various application in smartphones, autonomous vehicles, Internet of things (IoT), etc

Five-frequency Galileo long-baseline ambiguity resolution with multipath mitigation

© 2018, The Author(s). For long-baseline over several hundreds of kilometers, the ionospheric delays that cannot be fully removed by differencing observations between receivers hampers rapid ambiguity resolution. Compared with forming ionospheric-free linear combination using dual- or triple-frequency observations, estimating ionospheric delays using uncombined observations keeps all the information of the observations and allows extension of the strategy to any number of frequencies. As the number of frequencies has increased for the various GNSSs, it is possible to study long-baseline ambiguity resolution performance using up to five frequencies with uncombined observations. We make use of real Galileo observations on five frequencies with a sampling interval of 1 s. Two long baselines continuously receiving signals from six Galileo satellites during corresponding test time intervals were processed to study the formal and empirical ambiguity success rates in case of full ambiguity resolution (FAR). The multipath effects are mitigated using the measuremen ts of another day when the constellation repeats. Compared to the results using multipath-uncorrected Galileo observations, it is found that the multipath mitigation plays an important role in improving the empirical ambiguity success rates. A high number of frequencies are also found to be helpful to achieve high ambiguity success rate within a short time. Using multipath-uncorrected observations on two, three, four and five frequencies, the mean empirical success rates are found to be about 73, 88, 91, and 95% at 10 s, respectively, while the values are increased to higher than 86, 95, 98, and 99% after mitigating the multipath effects

Navigation Facility for High Accuracy Offline Trajectory and Attitude Estimation in Airborne Applications

The paper focuses on a navigation facility, relying on commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) technology, developed to generate high-accuracy attitude and trajectory measurements in postprocessing. Target performance is cm-level positioning with tenth of degree attitude accuracy. The facility is based on the concept of GPS-aided inertial navigation but comprises carrier-phase differential GPS (CDGPS) processing and attitude estimation based on multiantenna GPS configurations. Expected applications of the system include: (a) performance assessment of integrated navigation systems, developed for general aviation aircraft and medium size unmanned aircraft systems (UAS); (b) generation of reference measurements to evaluate the flight performance of airborne sensors (e.g., radar or laser); and (c) generation of reference trajectory and attitude for improving imaging quality of airborne remote sensing data. The paper describes system architecture, selected algorithms for data processing and integration, and theoretical performance evaluation. Experimental results are also presented confirming the effectiveness of the implemented approach