Smart constellation selection for precise vehicle positioning in urban canyons using a software-defined receiver solution

Abstract

Positioning techniques based on satellite navigation systems are nowadays standard in most commercial vehicles. But GPS receivers in general are effected by multipath and atmospheric effects and hence their performance may be decreased, especially in challenging environments that directly affects the usage of satellite-based positioning in traffic-relevant and by that safety-critical systems. Therefore, this paper describes, based on an exemplary implementation of an Advanced Software-Defined radio receiver (ASDR) for Global Navigation Satellite Systems, the impact of the direct receiver surrounding. In addition, a so-called Smart Constellation Selection (SCS) as pre-positioning routine will be introduced to increase the accuracy by just using already available data at the receiver side. Next to the implementation of the ASDR itself, the functionality and performance of the SCS will be explained. In addition, this contribution contains the introduction of a freely available database with geo-referenced GPS measurements including web-based analysis functionalities to enable other researches to test and evaluate their ideas for future GNSS enhancements.