An Efficient Ultra-Tight GPS/RISS Integrated System for Challenging Navigation Environments

The Global Positioning System (GPS) provides an accurate navigation solution in the open sky. However, in some environments such as urban areas or in the presence of signal jamming, GPS signals cannot be easily tracked since they could be harshly attenuated or entirely blocked. This often requires the GPS receiver to go into a signal re-acquisition phase for the corresponding satellite. To avoid the intensive computations necessary for the signal re-lock in a GPS receiver, a robust signal-tracking mechanism that can hold and/or rapidly re-lock on the signals and keep track of their dynamics becomes a necessity. This paper augments a vector-based GPS signal tracking system with a Reduced Inertial Sensor System (RISS) to produce a new ultra-tight GPS/INS integrated system that enhances receivers’ tracking robustness and sensitivity in challenging navigation environments. The introduced system is simple, efficient, reliable, yet inexpensive. To challenge the proposed method with real jamming conditions, real experiment work was conducted inside the Anechoic Chamber room at the Royal Military College of Canada (RMC). The Spirent GSS6700 signal simulator was used to generate GPS signals, and an INS Simulator is used for simulating the inertial measurement unit (IMU) to generate the corresponding trajectory raw data. The NEAT jammer, by NovAtel, was used to generate real jamming signals. Results show a good performance of the proposed method under real signal jamming conditions.

Vehicular Navigation Based on the Fusion of 3D-RISS and Machine Learning Enhanced Visual Data in Challenging Environments

Based on the 3D Reduced Inertial Sensor System (3D-RISS) and the Machine Learning Enhanced Visual Data (MLEVD), an integrated vehicle navigation system is proposed in this paper. In demanding conditions such as outdoor satellite signal interference and indoor navigation, this work incorporates vehicle smooth navigation. Firstly, a landmark is set up and both of its size and position are accurately measured. Secondly, the image with the landmark information is captured quickly by using the machine learning. Thirdly, the template matching method and the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) are then used to correct the errors of the Inertial Navigation System (INS), which employs the 3D-RISS to reduce the overall cost and ensuring the vehicular positioning accuracy simultaneously. Finally, both outdoor and indoor experiments are conducted to verify the performance of the 3D-RISS/MLEVD integrated navigation technology. Results reveal that the proposed method can effectively reduce the accumulated error of the INS with time while maintaining the positioning error within a few meters.

Odometer Velocity and Acceleration Estimation Based on Tracking Differentiator Filter for 3D-Reduced Inertial Sensor System

Velocity information from the odometer is the key information in a reduced inertial sensor system (RISS), and is prone to noise corruption. In order to improve the navigation accuracy and reliability of a 3D RISS, a method based on a tracking differentiator (TD) filter was proposed to track odometer velocity and acceleration. With the TD filter, an input signal and its differential signal are estimated fast and accurately to avoid the noise amplification that is brought by the conventional differential method. The TD filter does not depend on an object model, and has less computational complexity. Moreover, the filter phase lag is decreased by the prediction process with the differential signal of the TD filter. In this study, the numerical simulation experiments indicate that the TD filter can achieve a better performance on random noises and outliers than traditional numerical differentiation. The effectiveness of the TD filter on a 3D RISS is demonstrated using a group of offline data that were obtained from an actual vehicle experiment. We conclude that the TD filter can not only quickly and correctly filter velocity and estimate acceleration from the odometer velocity for a 3D RISS, but can also improve the reliability of the 3D RISS.

An efficient positioning solution in urban canyons using enhanced extended Kalman particle filter

Purpose This paper aims to propose a 3D-map aided tightly coupled positioning solution for land vehicles to reduce the errors caused by non-line-of-sight (NLOS) and multipath interference in urban canyons. Design/methodology/approach First, a simple but efficient 3D-map is created by adding the building height information to the existing 2D-map. Then, through a designed effective satellite selection method, the distinct NLOS pseudo-range measurements can be excluded. Further, an enhanced extended Kalman particle filter algorithm is proposed to fuse the information from dual-constellation Global Navigation Satellite Systems and reduced inertial sensor system. The dependable degree of each selected satellite is adjusted through fuzzy logic to further mitigate the effect of misjudged LOS and multipath. Findings The proposed solution can improve positioning accuracy in urban canyons. The experimental results evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed solution and indicate that the proposed solution outperforms all the compared counterparts. Originality/value The effect of NLOS and multipath is addressed from both the observation level and fusion level. To the authors’ knowledge, mitigating the effect of misjudged LOS and multipath in the fusion algorithm of tightly coupled integration is seldom considered in existing literature.

Augmented Kalman Filter and Map Matching for 3D RISS/GPS Integration for Land Vehicles

Owing to their complimentary characteristics, global positioning system (GPS) and inertial navigation system (INS) are integrated, traditionally through Kalman filter (KF), to obtain improved navigational solution. To reduce the overall cost of the system, microelectromechanical system- (MEMS-) based INS is utilized. One of the approaches is to reduce the number of low-cost inertial sensors, decreasing their error contribution which leads to a reduced inertial sensor system (RISS). This paper uses KF to integrate GPS and 3D RISS in a loosely coupled fashion to enhance navigational solution while further improvement is achieved by augmenting it with map matching (MM). The 3D RISS consists of only one gyroscope and two accelerometers along with the vehicle’s built-in odometer. MM limits the error growth during GPS outages by restricting the predicted positions to the road networks. The performance of proposed method is compared with KF-only 3D RISS/GPS integration to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed technique.