Cooperative Positioning in Vehicular Networks

Abstract

This chapter introduces the concept of Cooperative Positioning (CP) for vehicular networks, or more precisely, VANETs (Vehicular Adhoc NETworks), as an application of DSRC (Dedicated Short Range Communication). It includes a comprehensive review of available and hypothetical vehicular positioning technologies. Amongst these, the importance of CP for Location Based Services using DSRC is emphasized, and some important issues are addressed that need to be resolved in order to implement CP successfully with standard DSRC infrastructure. The performance bounds of CP are derived. Ranging between vehicles is identified as the main hurdle to be overcome. Time-based techniques of ranging are introduced, and the bandwidth requirements are investigated. The robustness of CP to inter-node connection failure as well as GPS (Global Positioning System) dropout is demonstrated via simulation. Kalman Filter performance for CP is evaluated, and proven to be efficient under conditions such as the consistency of GPS signal availability ranging between vehicles. CP has, however, shown to increase the positioning accuracy to 1-meter level, even in the deep urban valleys where vehicles frequently become invisible to navigation. Overall, CP is proven to be a viable concept and worthy of development as a DSRC application.