Collaborative Autonomous Vehicles with Signals of Opportunity Aided Inertial Navigation Systems

Abstract

A collaborative signal of opportunity (SOP)-aided inertial navigation system (INS) framework is presented and studied. The following problem is considered. Multiple autonomous vehicles (AVs) with access to global navigation satellite system (GNSS) signals are aiding their on-board INSs with GNSS pseudoranges. While navigating, AVmounted receivers draw pseudorange observations on ambient unknown terrestrial SOPs and collaboratively estimate the SOPs’ states. After some time, GNSS signals become unavailable. Subsequently, the AVs exploit the SOPs to collaboratively aid their INSs. A collaborative estimation framework which uses time-difference-of-arrival (TDOA) measurements taken with reference to a specific SOP is presented. This framework is studied over varying the quantity of collaborating AVs, and it is demonstrated that “GNSS-like” performance can be achieved in the absence of GNSS signals. Experimental results are presented demonstrating multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) collaboratively navigating exclusively with their onboard inertial measurement units (IMUs) and pseudoranges extracted from unknown terrestrial SOPs emanating from two cellular towers.