Can GPS be used for Location Based Services at Schiphol Airport, the Netherlands?

Abstract

Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands is one of the main airports of Europe. To improve the airport's procedures reliable and accurate positioning information is required. This paper investigates whether GPS (or in general) GNSS can provide such positioning information. Schiphol Airport is a challenging environment for satellite-based positioning, because the area is densely built, and GNSS signals should be received inside the buildings as well, enabling indoor location based services. Several experiments using a low-cost receiver have been carried out to investigate the performance of GPS. Outdoors near the piers the position availability is very good: even at locations under passing the piers sufficient satellites are tracked to compute positions. Indoors the availability of GPS really depends on the characteristics of the building. Multipath errors can degrade the position accuracy significantly. The main conclusion reads that due to a lack of availability indoors, location based services at Schiphol Airport should not rely on GNSS only as source of their positioning information.