GNSS accuracy enhancement based on pseudo range error estimation in an urban propagation environment

• GNSS accuracy enhancement in urban environments without any supplementary sensors.
• Making the use of realistic error distribution in order to enhance the filtering process.
• Simulation and experimental results to illustrate the performances obtained.

For new ITS applications, positioning solutions will require to be more accurate and available. The most common technique used today is composed of a GPS receiver, sometimes aided by other sensors. GPS, and GNSS in general, suffer from masking effects and propagation disturbances in urban areas that cause biases on pseudo range measurements. Mitigation solutions sometimes propose to detect and exclude outliers but in land transportation applications, such a decision reduces dramatically the service availability and thus, the interest of satellite-based solutions. In order to optimize the use the satellites received, we propose a new positioning algorithm based on signals only with pseudo range error modeling in association with an adapted filtering process. The model and the filter have been validated with simulation data performed along an urban bus line and have shown that both positioning error and availability can be improved. Along the trajectory tested, the mean accuracy has been reduced from 5.3 m with a classical filter to 2.6 m with our algorithm with 89% of the points more accurate than 5 m instead of 64% before.