Multiepoch Grid-Based 3DMA Positioning in Dense Urban Canyons by Optimizing Reflection Modeling

Abstract

Urban positioning with global navigation satellite systems is challenging because reflections, diffractions, and obstructions introduce multipath interference and non-line-of-sight reception, degrading accuracy to tens of meters. The growing availability of three-dimensional city models offers an opportunity to model these effects. This contribution proposes an enhanced 3-D mapping aided ray-tracing algorithm, RT-based grid weight smoothing and clustering (RT-GWSC). It incorporates a reflection-diffraction model and a positioning scheme using multiepoch weight smoothing and density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise. Static and kinematic experiments in different urban environments demonstrate that the reflection-diffraction model improves sensitivity of non-line-of-sight prediction from 53.7% to 90.7% and overall accuracy from 86.3% to 96.8%. RT-GWSC reduces positioning outliers and achieves accuracies better than 15 m in all tested environments, outperforming raw GNSS outputs by more than 73%, while the conventional ray-tracing approach is ineffective in certain complex environments.

Type
Journal article
Publication
IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, 74, Article 8503213