scholarly journals Performance evaluation of GNSS receiver clock modelling in urban navigation using geodetic and high-sensitivity receivers

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Ankit Jain ◽  
Steffen Schön

Abstract In urban areas, the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) can lead to position errors of tens of meters due to signal obstruction and severe multipath effects. In cases of 3D-positioning, the vertical coordinate is estimated less accurately than are the horizontal coordinates. Multisensor systems can enhance navigation performance in terms of accuracy, availability, continuity and integrity. However, the addition of multiple sensors increases the system cost, and thereby the applicability to low-cost applications is limited. By using the concept of receiver clock modelling (RCM), the position estimation can be made more robust; the use of high-sensitivity (HS) GNSS receivers can improve the system availability and continuity. This paper investigates the integration of a low-cost HS GNSS receiver with an external clock in urban conditions; subsequently, the gain in the navigation performance is evaluated. GNSS kinematic data is recorded in an urban environment with multiple geodetic-grade and HS receivers. The external clock stability information is incorporated through the process noise matrix in a Kalman filter when estimating the position, velocity and time states. Results shows that the improvement in the precision of the height component and vertical velocity with both receivers is about 70% with RCM compared with the estimates obtained without applying RCM. Pertaining accuracy, the improvement in height with RCM is found to be about 70% and 50% with geodetic and HS receivers, respectively. In terms of availability, the HS receiver delivers an 100% output compared with a geodetic receiver, which provides an output 99⋅4% of the total experiment duration.

Author(s):  
M. Rehak ◽  
J. Skaloud

Mapping with Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs whose weight does not exceed 5&amp;thinsp;kg) is gaining importance in applications such as corridor mapping, road and pipeline inspections, or mapping of large areas with homogeneous surface structure, e.g. forest or agricultural fields. In these challenging scenarios, integrated sensor orientation (ISO) improves effectiveness and accuracy. Furthermore, in block geometry configurations, this mode of operation allows mapping without ground control points (GCPs). Accurate camera positions are traditionally determined by carrier-phase GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) positioning. However, such mode of positioning has strong requirements on receiver’s and antenna’s performance. In this article, we present a mapping project in which we employ a single-frequency, low-cost (<&amp;thinsp;$100) GNSS receiver on a MAV. The performance of the low-cost receiver is assessed by comparing its trajectory with a reference trajectory obtained by a survey-grade, multi-frequency GNSS receiver. In addition, the camera positions derived from these two trajectories are used as observations in bundle adjustment (BA) projects and mapping accuracy is evaluated at check points (ChP). Several BA scenarios are considered with absolute and relative aerial position control. Additionally, the presented experiments show the possibility of BA to determine a camera-antenna spatial offset, so-called lever-arm.


2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (04) ◽  
pp. 917-930
Author(s):  
Fang-Shii Ning ◽  
Xiaolin Meng ◽  
Yi-Ting Wang

Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) have been researched extensively for solving traffic issues and for realising the concept of an intelligent transport system. A well-developed positioning system is critical for CAVs to achieve these aims. The system should provide high accuracy, mobility, continuity, flexibility and scalability. However, high-performance equipment is too expensive for the commercial use of CAVs; therefore, the use of a low-cost Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver to achieve real-time, high-accuracy and ubiquitous positioning performance will be a future trend. This research used RTKLIB software to develop a low-cost GNSS receiver positioning system and assessed the developed positioning system according to the requirements of CAV applications. Kinematic tests were conducted to evaluate the positioning performance of the low-cost receiver in a CAV driving environment based on the accuracy requirements of CAVs. The results showed that the low-cost receiver satisfied the “Where in Lane” accuracy level (0·5 m) and achieved a similar positioning performance in rural, interurban, urban and motorway areas.


2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 36-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Massimiliano Pepe

In recent years, the use of low cost GNSS receivers is becoming widespread due to their increasing performance in the spatial positioning, flexibility, ease of use and really interesting price. In addition, a recent technique of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) survey, called Network Real Time Kinematic (NRTK), allows to obtain to rapid and accurate positioning measurements. The main feature of this approach is to use the raw measurements obtained and stored from a network of Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS) in order to generate more reliable error models that can mitigate the distance-dependent errors within the area covered by the CORS. Also, considering the huge potential of this GNSS positioning system, the purpose of this paper is to analyze and investigate the performance of the NTRK approach using a low cost GNSS receiver, in stop-and-go kinematic technique. By several case studies it was shown that, using a low cost RTK board for Arduino environment, a smartphone with open source application for Android and the availability of data correction from CORS service, a quick and accurate positioning can be obtained. Because the measures obtained in this way are quite noisy and, more in general, increasing with the baseline, by a simple and suitable statistic treatment, it was possible to increase the quality of the measure. In this way, this low cost architecture could be applied in many geomatics fields. In addition to presenting the main aspects of the NTRK infrastructure and a review of several types of correction, a general workflow in order to obtain quality data in NRTK mode, regardless of the type of GNSS receiver (multi constellations, single or many frequencies, etc.) is discussed.


Author(s):  
D. Pagliari ◽  
N. E. Cazzaniga ◽  
L. Pinto

Nowadays, devices and applications that require navigation solutions are continuously growing. For instance, consider the increasing demand of mapping information or the development of applications based on users’ location. In some case it could be sufficient an approximate solution (e.g. at room level), but in the large amount of cases a better solution is required. <br><br> The navigation problem has been solved from a long time using Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). However, it can be unless in obstructed areas, such as in urban areas or inside buildings. An interesting low cost solution is photogrammetry, assisted using additional information to scale the photogrammetric problem and recovering a solution also in critical situation for image-based methods (e.g. poor textured surfaces). In this paper, the use of assisted photogrammetry has been tested for both outdoor and indoor scenarios. Outdoor navigation problem has been faced developing a positioning system with Ground Control Points extracted from urban maps as constrain and tie points automatically extracted from the images acquired during the survey. The proposed approach has been tested under different scenarios, recovering the followed trajectory with an accuracy of 0.20 m. <br><br> For indoor navigation a solution has been thought to integrate the data delivered by Microsoft Kinect, by identifying interesting features on the RGB images and re-projecting them on the point clouds generated from the delivered depth maps. Then, these points have been used to estimate the rotation matrix between subsequent point clouds and, consequently, to recover the trajectory with few centimeters of error.


Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (12) ◽  
pp. 3441 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niklas König ◽  
Matthias Nienhaus

Position estimation techniques for solenoid actuators are successfully used in a wide field of applications requiring monitoring functionality without the need for additional sensors. Most techniques, which also include standstill condition, are based on the identification of the differential inductance, a parameter that exhibits high sensitivity towards position variations. The differential inductance of some actuators shows a non-monotonic dependency over the position. This leads to ambiguities in position estimation. Nevertheless, a unique position estimation in standstill condition without prior knowledge of the actuator state is highly desired. In this work, the eddy current losses inside the actuator are identified in terms of a parallel resistor and are exploited in order to solve the ambiguities in position estimation. Compared to other state-of-the-art techniques, the differential inductance and the parallel resistance are estimated online by approaches requiring low implementation and computation effort. Furthermore, a data fusion algorithm for position estimation based on a neural network is proposed. Experimental results involving a use case scenario of an end-position detection for a switching solenoid actuator prove the uniqueness, the precision and the high signal-to-noise ratio of the obtained position estimate. The proposed approach therefore allows the unique estimation of the actuator position including standstill condition suitable for low-cost applications demanding low implementation effort.


2021 ◽  
Vol 310 ◽  
pp. 03001
Author(s):  
Anindya Bose ◽  
Somnath Mahato ◽  
Sukabya Dan ◽  
Atanu Santra

Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) uses Precise Point Positioning (PPP) technique to find out accurate geolocation information of any point. Generally, costly, geodetic GNSS receivers are used for PPP. This manuscript presents the results of studies on the usability of commercial, compact, cost-effective GNSS modules with commercial antennas for PPP in comparison to commonly used geodetic, costly receivers from India, which is a excellent location for GNSS use. Compact GNSS modules from two manufacturers are used in the study, and the encouraging results show the clear advantage of cost, size, and power requirements of such modules. The modules provide sub-cm horizontal solution accuracy which is very similar to those obtained using geodetic receivers, and around 20 cm accuracy in the vertical coordinate, which is slightly inferior to the results provided by the geodetic reveivers. Results of this novel study would be useful for implementing cost-efficient GNSS PPP in real life, in highly demanding geodetic applications including CORS establishment and PPP.


2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (06) ◽  
pp. 1450079 ◽  
Author(s):  
PAWAN WHIG ◽  
SYED NASEEM AHMAD

In this paper, the design of an ASIC is presented that implement a low-cost system for the supervision of water quality in urban areas or rivers. Photo catalytic sensor (PCS) estimates the parameter biological oxygen demand (BOD) which is generally used to estimate quality of water. The system proposed in this paper involves a simple potentiometric approach that provides a correlation in the input–output signals of low-cost sensors. This approach which is more users friendly and fast in operation is obtained by modeling and optimization of sensor for water quality monitoring. This is to overcome several drawbacks generally found in the previous flow injection analysis method of determining chemical oxygen demand (COD)-like complex designing, nonlinearity and long computation time. The system constitutes a significant cost reduction in the supervision of water quality monitoring. The main reason of employing a readout circuit to PCS circuitry, is the fact that the fluctuation of O 2 influences the threshold voltage, which is internal parameter of the FET and can manifest itself as a voltage signal at output but as a function of the trans-conductance gain. The trans-conductance is a passive parameter and in order to derive voltage or current signal from its fluctuations the sensor has to be attached to readout circuit. This circuit provides high sensitivity to the changes in percentage of O 2 in the solution. In this design simple potentiometric approach with few passive components are used to build a readout circuit. The paper focuses on the electronic implementation of the readout system for the PCS which optimize the circuit performance and increases reliability.


2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (6) ◽  
pp. 1202-1222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hoi-Fung Ng ◽  
Guohao Zhang ◽  
Li-Ta Hsu

Global navigation satellite system (GNSS) positioning in dense urban areas remains a challenge due to the signal reflection by buildings, namely multipath and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) reception. These effects degrade the performance of low-cost GNSS receivers such as in those smartphones. An effective three-dimensional (3D) mapping aided GNSS positioning method is proposed to correct the NLOS error. Instead of applying ray-tracing simulation, the signal reflection points are detected based on a skyplot with the surrounding building boundaries. The measurements of the direct and reflected signals can thus be simulated and further used to determine the user's position based on the measurement likelihood between real measurements. Verified with real experiments, the proposed algorithm is able to reduce the computational load greatly while maintaining a positioning accuracy within 10 metres of error in dense urban environments, compared with the conventional method of ray-tracing based NLOS corrected positioning.


Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (15) ◽  
pp. 4261
Author(s):  
Dong-Hyo Sohn ◽  
Byung-Kyu Choi ◽  
Yosup Park ◽  
Yoon Chil Kim ◽  
Bonhwa Ku

We estimate precipitable water vapor (PWV) from data collected by the low-cost Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver at a vessel. The dual-frequency GNSS receiver that the vessel ISABU is equipped with that is operated by the Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology. The ISABU served in the Pacific Ocean for scientific research during a period from August 30 to September 21, 2018. It also performs radiosonde observations to obtain a vertical profile of troposphere on the vessel’s path. The GNSS-derived PWV is compared to radiosonde observations and the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite output. A bias and root-mean-square (RMS) error between shipborne GNSS-PWV and radiosonde-PWV were −1.48 and 5.22 mm, respectively. When compared to the ground GNSS-PWV, shipborne GNSS-PWV has a relatively large RMS error in comparison with radiosonde-PWV. However, the GNSS observations on the vessel are still in good agreement with radiosonde observations. On the other hand, the GNSS-PWV is not well linearly correlated with AIRS-PWV. The RMS error between the two observations was approximately 8.97 mm. In addition, we showed that the vessel on the sea surface has significantly larger carrier phase multipath error compared to the ground-based GNSS observations. This also can result in reducing the accuracy of shipborne GNSS-PWV. However, we suggest that the shipborne GNSS has sufficient potential to derive PWV with the kinematic precise point positioning (PPP) solution on the vessel.


Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (12) ◽  
pp. 3397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xin Feng ◽  
Tisheng Zhang ◽  
Tao Lin ◽  
Hailiang Tang ◽  
Xiaoji Niu

In urban environments, Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) signals are frequently attenuated, blocked or reflected, which degrades the positioning accuracy of GNSS receivers significantly. To improve the performance of GNSS receiver for vehicle urban navigation, a GNSS/INS deeply-coupled software defined receiver (GIDCSR) with a low cost micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) inertial measurement unit (IMU) ICM-20602 is presented, in which both GPS and BDS constellations are supported. Two key technologies, that is, adaptive open-close tracking loops and INS aided pseudo-range weight control algorithm, are applied in the GIDCSR to enhance the signal tracking continuity and positioning accuracy in urban areas. To assess the performance of the proposed deep couple solution, vehicle field tests were carried out in GNSS-challenged urban environments. With the adaptive open-close tracking loops, the deep couple output carrier phase in the open sky, and improved pseudo-range accuracy before and after GNSS signal blocked. Applying the INS aided pseudo-range weight control, the pseudo-range gross errors of the deep couple decreased caused by multipath. A popular GNSS/INS tightly-coupled vehicle navigation kit from u-blox company, M8U, was tested side by side as benchmark. The test results indicate that in the GNSS-challenged urban areas, the pseudo-range quality of GIDCSR is at least 25% better than that of M8U, and GIDCSR’s horizontal positioning results are at least 69% more accurate than M8U’s.


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