Identification of GPS positioning solutions deteriorated by signal degradations using a fuzzy inference system

Abstract

The accuracy of GPS positioning based on pseudorange measurements under signal degradation environments is limited by poor satellite geometry and signal distortions due to diffraction and multipath. As a result, the GPS position solutions could become unreliable. Those deteriorated solutions should be identified and not used for navigation. For that purpose, methods for reliable identification of deteriorated GPS positioning solutions from a navigation receiver should be developed. In this paper, a fuzzy inference system is proposed to classify the quality of GPS positioning solutions. The input for the system includes the signal quality evaluated by the difference between the measured and expected carrier-to-noise density ratio (C/N0) and the satellites geometry strength evaluated by the dilution of precision (DOP) number. The proposed fuzzy inference system is developed based on the human knowledge and understanding of the problem under consideration and is further optimized using data acquired from the field. The test results indicate that the proposed method can be used for reliable identification of deteriorated GPS position solutions affected by signal degradations.