Reliable Bounding Zones and Inconsistency Measures for GPS Positioning using Geometrical Constraints

Abstract

Reliable confidence domains for Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) positioning and inconsistency measures of the observations are of great importance for any navigation system, especially for safety critical applications. In this work, deterministic error bounds are introduced in form of intervals to assess remaining observation errors. The intervals can be computed based on expert knowledge or based on a sensitivity analysis of the measurement correction process. Using convex optimization, bounding zones are computed for GPS positioning using the geometrical constraints imposed by the observation intervals. The bounding zone is a convex polytope, where exploiting only the navigation geometry, confidence domain is computed in form of zonotope. We show that the relative volume between the polytopes and the zonotope is an inconsistency measures. Small polytope volume indicates bad consistency of the observations. In extreme cases empty sets are obtained which indicates large outliers. We determine the observation intervals via sensitivity analysis of the Klobuchar ionospheric model and Saastamoinen tropospheric model. The remaining errors are treated as white noise. We explain how the shape and the volume of the polytope are related to the positioning geometry. We show that this assignment has to be interpreted with care. Furthermore, we propose a new concept of Minimum Detectable Biases (MDB). Taking GPS data from simulations and real experiments, a comparison analysis between the proposed deterministic bounding method and the classical least-squares adjustment has been conduct in terms of accuracy and reliability. This helps validating that our proposed deterministic bound methods shows high internal and external reliability compared to the probabilistic approaches and that it provides rigorous inconsistency measures.