Search Results (20)

To address the limitations in positioning accuracy and the risk of integrity degradation in Satellite-Based Augmentation Systems (SBAS) user-end after applying augmentation information, this study proposes a positioning algorithm integrating an improved IGG III robust estimation method. By using integrity information from SBAS, this method improves protection level calculations and better adjusts observed weights by adding new factors to the weight function model. This improvement allows for better discrimination between reliable and anomalous measurements, thereby enhancing positioning accuracy, reducing integrity risks, and improving availability. Experimental results show that, compared to conventional SBAS user positioning, the proposed method achieves notable performance improvements across various scenarios. In static environments, it reduces horizontal integrity risk by up to 6.7%, increases availability by up to 6.6%, and improves positioning accuracy by up to 71.3%. In urban vehicular environments, horizontal integrity risk is reduced by 0.5%, availability is increased by 0.5%, and accuracy improves by up to 58.7%. In Unmanned Aerial Vehicle flight scenarios, horizontal integrity risk is reduced by 2.8%, availability increases by 2.8%, and accuracy improves by up to 50.38%. In all scenarios, vertical integrity risk is completely eliminated and availability improves slightly. Additionally, compared to the conventional IGG III estimator, the improved method offers more effective control over weight adjustment during solution estimation, thereby avoiding excessive down-weighting and mitigating overbounding of protection levels. These results demonstrate the potential of the proposed method to improve the performance and reliability of SBAS user-end under both static and dynamic conditions. Full article

Railway transportation systems have high accuracy and high integrity demands for safe localization. In the future, railway signaling is expected to rely on onboard sensors like Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSSs) in order to reduce installation and maintenance costs. GNSS position determination can, however, be highly degraded because of the presence of multipath on the train and railway environment. This paper tackles the characterization of multipath in code measurements caused exclusively by the antenna installation and derives a conservative error model of the antenna-installation-induced multipath and noise. First, we isolate multipath and noise from other GNSS errors using the Code-Minus-Carrier method. Second, an overbounding error model is derived. The limitation of modeling with restricted set of real data typically found in practice is discussed and we review methods that ensure the independence of samples. A new approach that creates separate data sets is ultimately proposed to derive an overbounding sigma. The presented methodology is supported by real measurements collected in an open-sky railway scenario. The derived models can be used as a reference nominal error models to build the null hypothesis of fault detection algorithms that detects the presence of excessive multipath in dynamic scenarios or as a part of a total error budget consideration. Full article

For Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) relative positioning, faulty pseudorange measurements may lead to over-bounded relative positioning errors, which entails high-performance fault detection and exclusion (FDE). This paper proposes an effective fault detection and exclusion method for pseudorange-based GNSS relative positioning utilizing the technique of the inter-frequency cross-validation (IFCV). Multi-frequency differenced pseudorange measurements are utilized to establish multiple inter-frequency test statistics for efficient detection of multiple outliers; the conservative strategy is adopted to exclude multiple faults for robust position determination. Compared with conventional ARAIM (Advanced Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring) method, the experimental results indicate that the proposed IFCV method exhibits lower false alarm rates (0.03% vs. 1.88%) and missed detection rates (0% vs. 1.02%). By artificially injecting random faults into GNSS measurements, conventional differential pseudorange-based method shows a significant decrease in positioning accuracy by 354%, while both IFCV and ARAIM methods improve positioning accuracy by 78% and 55%, respectively. Apart from advantages in accuracy over ARAIM method, the proposed IFCV demonstrates a computational efficiency improvement of 10⁴ over ARAIM. Full article

Overbounding the integrity risk is a significant challenge for Kalman filter (KF)-based advanced receiver autonomous integrity monitoring (ARAIM) when the measurement error has an uncertain time correlation. Thus, this paper presents a method that addresses this challenge by effectively bounding the integrity risk for KF-based ARAIM while considering the uncertainty in the model of the time-correlated error. Firstly, the recursive equation for covariance is derived, establishing a direct mathematical expression that links the integrity risk and the correlation time constant. Subsequently, a min–max optimization model is constructed, utilizing the obtained expression as the objective function, to simultaneously bound the integrity risk and reduce conservatism. To effectively address the current min–max optimization problem, a hybrid evolutionary algorithm is proposed, which conducts global searching followed by local searching. The simulation result demonstrates that it outperforms other algorithms, enabling rapid attainment of the minimum upper bound on the integrity risk. Full article

The Gaussian mixture model (GMM) is commonly used to model the heavy tail of the ground-based augmentation system (GBAS) range error distribution. In practice, Gaussian over-bounding based on a GMM is used to over-bound the heavy tail of the ranging errors, but the GBAS protection levels (PLs) based on the Gaussian over-bounding tend to be overestimated. Based on the idea of solution separation and overcoming the shortcoming of its direct reference to GBAS, this paper analyses the constraint conditions and objective functions of the optimal protection level based on solution separation under a GMM distribution, and proposes that multi-hypothesis solution set classification can effectively reduce the computational complexity. At the same time, least squares optimization and dynamic allocation of integrity risk are used to further reduce the protection level. This paper verifies the validity of the parameters of the GMM based on actual airport GBAS data, performs simulation verification of the typical scenarios of CAT I and CAT II/IIIa global GBAS under the Beidou 3 constellation, and analyses the performance improvement effect under different solution set traversal depths. The results show that when the traversal depths of CAT I and CAT II/IIIa are 4 and 6, the vertical protection level component of the ground ranging error is reduced by 14% and the total vertical protection level is reduced by 10%. Full article

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) are used to provide accurate position, navigation, and time (PNT) information to users in various sectors of our society including transportation. Augmentation systems such as differential GNSS (DGNSS), real-time kinematics (RTK), and Precise Point Positioning (PPP) improve the GNSS performance, and providing reliable measurements from its reference station is very crucial. To ensure safe and accurate PNT solutions, code and carrier measurements must be monitored for potential faults or a performance degrade. Although there exist numerous methods to model and monitor the measurements, research on the carrier phase measurements is not as extensive as the code measurements. This paper introduces a split of residuals into receiver noise and multipath components to customize their estimation according to their respective statistical properties. This study also proposes a method to use machine learning-based non-linear regression to effectively model and monitor potential faults in the GNSS measurements including the carrier phase. A training dataset is used to model the nominal quantities of GNSS measurement residuals, and inflation factors are applied to over-bound the fault-free residuals. These inflated residuals are coupled with uncertainty factors to compute thresholds for monitoring carrier phase residuals, and the effectiveness of the thresholds is validated with a test dataset by achieving the false alarm rate of $6.61\times {10}^{-6}$, slightly lower than the desired level of ${10}^{-5}$. Full article

Integrity monitoring (IM) is essential if GNSS positioning technologies are to be fully trusted by future intelligent transport systems. A tighter and conservative stochastic model can shrink protection levels in the position domain and therefore enhance the user-level integrity. In this study, the stochastic models for vehicle-based GNSS positioning are refined in three respects: (1) Gaussian bounds of precise orbit and clock error products from the International GNSS Service are used; (2) a variable standard deviation to characterize the residual tropospheric delay after model correction is adopted; and (3) an elevation-dependent model describing the receiver-related errors is adaptively refined using least-squares variance component estimation. The refined stochastic models are used for positioning and IM under the Advanced Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring (ARAIM) framework, which is considered the basis for multi-constellation GNSS navigation to support air navigation in the future. These refinements are assessed via global simulations and real data experiments. Different schemes are designed and tested to evaluate the corresponding enhancements on ARAIM availability for both aviation and ground vehicle-based positioning applications. Full article

The performance of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and Inertial Navigation System (INS) integrated navigation can be severely degraded in urban canyons due to the non-line-of-sight (NLOS) signals and multipath effects. Therefore, to achieve a high-precision and robust integrated system, real-time fault detection and localization algorithms are needed to ensure integrity. Currently, the residual chi-square test is used for fault detection in the positioning domain, but it has poor sensitivity when faults disappear. Three-dimensional (3D) light detection and ranging (LiDAR) has good positioning performance in complex environments. First, a LiDAR aided real-time fault detection algorithm is proposed. A test statistic is constructed by the mean deviation of the matched targets, and a dynamic threshold is constructed by a sliding window. Second, to solve the problem that measurement noise is estimated by prior modeling with a certain error, a LiDAR aided real-time measurement noise estimation based on adaptive filter localization algorithm is proposed according to the position deviations of matched targets. Finally, the integrity of the integrated system is assessed. The error bound of integrated positioning is innovatively verified with real test data. We conduct two experiments with a vehicle going through a viaduct and a floor hole, which, represent mid and deep urban canyons, respectively. The experimental results show that in terms of fault detection, the fault could be detected in mid urban canyons and the response time of fault disappearance is reduced by 70.24% in deep urban canyons. Thus, the poor sensitivity of the residual chi-square test for fault disappearance is improved. In terms of localization, the proposed algorithm is compared with the optimal fading factor adaptive filter (OFFAF) and the extended Kalman filter (EKF). The proposed algorithm is the most effective, and the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) in the east and north is reduced by 12.98% and 35.1% in deep urban canyons. Regarding integrity assessment, the error bound can overbound the positioning errors in deep urban canyons relative to the EKF and the mean value of the error bounds is reduced. Full article

Valid multipath error model is the prerequisite for high-performance GNSS integrity monitoring. It is indispensable to civil aviation and other Safety-of-Life (SoL) users. The model must perfectly bound multipath error while preventing the constructed model from being too conservative. Nevertheless, no sound methodologies to meet both the requirements have been introduced in previous literatures, and subsequently, practices always require iterative manual trade-offs. To improve the efficiency of multipath modeling, we propose a new automatic multipath error modeling methodology. It quantifies the above requirements in the objective function of multiobjective genetic algorithm (GA) so that multipath modeling can be managed automatically. Moreover, through introducing a new model that is based on two inflation factors, conservatism of modeling results can be significantly reduced. Experiments based on a 4-month dataset of BDS-3 Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellites show that constructed multipath models effectively bound actual error in each elevation bin. In addition, the new model form with two inflation factors brings average CDF difference reduction of 67.4% at B1I and 50.6% at B3I, which means significantly mitigation in terms of conservatism. Full article

To ensure the integrity of a ground-based augmentation system (GBAS), an ionosphere-free (Ifree) filtering algorithm with dual-frequency measurements is employed to make the GBAS free of the first-order ionospheric influence. However, the Ifree algorithm outputs the errors of two frequencies. The protection level obtained via the traditional Gaussian overbound is overconservative. This conservatism may cause false alarms and diminish availability. An overbounding framework based on a Gaussian mixture model (GMM) is proposed to handle samples drawn from Ifree-based GBAS range errors. The GMM is employed to model the single-frequency errors that concern the uncertainty estimation. A Monte Carlo simulation is performed to determine the accuracy of the estimated GMM confidence level obtained by using the general estimation approach. Then, the final GMM used to overbound the Ifree error distribution is analyzed. Based on the convolution invariance property, vertical protection levels in the position domain are explicitly derived without introducing complex numerical calculations. A performance evaluation based on a real-world road test shows that the Ifree-based vertical protection levels are tightened with a small computational cost. Full article

Introducing ionospheric information into a precise point positioning (PPP) solution enables faster ambiguity resolution and significantly improves positioning accuracy. To compute such corrections over wide areas, sparse networks with potentially irregular station distributions are often used. This aspect brings a new level of complexity as ionospheric corrections should be weighted appropriately in the PPP filter. This paper presents a possible implementation of grid-based wide-area slant ionospheric delay corrections, with a focus on the reported uncertainties. A balance is obtained between obtaining corrections with formal errors small enough to enable fast convergence, while large enough to overbound most errors. Based on least-squares collocation, the method uses satellite-specific variograms based on the 99th percentile values in each distance bin. Tested in southern Canada over a 53-week period in 2020, ionospheric grids allowed dual-frequency receivers to obtain around 5 cm accuracy in each horizontal component within 5 min of static data collection. For single-frequency solutions using data from geodetic receivers, positioning errors were reduced by over 60% for both static and kinematic processing. Full article

Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Precise Point Positioning (PPP) is an attractive positioning technology due to its high precision and flexibility. However, the vulnerability of PPP brings a safety risk to its application in the field of life safety, which must be evaluated quantitatively to provide integrity for PPP users. Generally, PPP solutions are processed recursively based on the extended Kalman filter (EKF) estimator, utilizing both the previous and current measurements. Therefore, the integrity risk should be qualified considering the effects of all the potential observation faults in history. However, this will cause the calculation load to explode over time, which is impractical for long-time missions. This study used the innovations in a time window to detect the faults in the measurements, quantifying the integrity risk by traversing the fault modes in the window to maintain a stable computation cost. A non-zero bias was conservatively introduced to encapsulate the effect of the faults before the window. Coping with the multiple simultaneous faults, the worst-case integrity risk was calculated to overbound the real risk in the multiple fault modes. In order to verify the proposed method, simulation and experimental tests were carried out in this study. The results showed that the fixed and hold mode adopted for ambiguity resolution is critical to an integrity risk evaluation, which can improve the observation redundancy and remove the influence of the biased predicted ambiguities on the integrity risk. Increasing the length of the window can weaken the impact of the conservative assumption on the integrity risk due to the smoothing effect of the EKF estimator. In addition, improving the accuracy of observations can also reduce the integrity risk, which indicates that establishing a refined PPP random model can improve the integrity performance. Full article

The next generation of satellite-based augmentation systems (SBAS) will support aviation receivers that take advantage of the ionosphere-free dual-frequency combination. By combining signals of the L1 and L5 bands, about 99% of the ionospheric refraction effects on the GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems) signals can be removed in the user receivers without additional SBAS corrections. Nevertheless, even if most of the negative impacts on GNSS signals are removed by the ionospheric-free combination, some residuals remain and have to be taken into account by overbounding models in the integrity computation conducted by safety-of-live (SoL) receivers in airplanes. Such models have to overbound residuals as well, which result from the most rare extreme ionospheric events, e.g., such as the famous “Halloween Storm”, and should thus include the tails of the error distribution. Their application shall lead to safe error bounds on the user position and allow the computation of protection levels for the horizontal and vertical position errors. Here, we propose and justify such an overbounding model for residual ionospheric delays that remain after the application of the ionospheric-free linear combination. The model takes into account second- and third-order ionospheric refraction effects, excess path due to ray bending, and increased ionospheric total electron content (TEC) along the signal path due to ray bending. Full article

The non-Gaussian observation error is a threat for advanced receiver autonomous integrity monitoring (ARAIM), because the protection level of ARAIM based on the Gaussian distribution assumption is insufficient to envelope the positioning error (PE), and the probability of hazardously misleading information (PHMI) is difficult to be satisfied. The traditional non-Gaussian overbounding method is limited by the correlation among observation errors, and the deteriorated continuity risk resulting from the conservative inflation factor for overbounding, simultaneously. We propose an enhanced ARAIM method by position-domain non-Gaussian error overbounding. Furthermore, the upper bound of the inflation factor is imposed to release the conservativeness of overbounding. The simulation and the real-world data are utilized to test the proposed method. The simulation experiment has shown that the global worldwide availability level can be increased to 99.99% by using the proposed method. The real-word data experiment reveals that the proposed method can simultaneously satisfy the integrity risk and continuity risk with the boundary of the inflation factor. Full article