Outlier Detection in GNSS Pseudo-Range/Doppler Measurements for Robust Localization

In urban areas or space-constrained environments with obstacles, vehicle localization using Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) data is hindered by Non-Line Of Sight (NLOS) and multipath receptions. These phenomena induce faulty data that disrupt the precise localization of the GNSS receiver. In this study, we detect the outliers among the observations, Pseudo-Range (PR) and/or Doppler measurements, and we evaluate how discarding them improves the localization. We specify a contrario modeling for GNSS raw data to derive an algorithm that partitions the dataset between inliers and outliers. Then, only the inlier data are considered in the localization process performed either through a classical Particle Filter (PF) or a Rao-Blackwellization (RB) approach. Both localization algorithms exclusively use GNSS data, but they differ by the way Doppler measurements are processed. An experiment has been performed with a GPS receiver aboard a vehicle. Results show that the proposed algorithms are able to detect the ‘outliers’ in the raw data while being robust to non-Gaussian noise and to intermittent satellite blockage. We compare the performance results achieved either estimating only PR outliers or estimating both PR and Doppler outliers. The best localization is achieved using the RB approach coupled with PR-Doppler outlier estimation.