Cooperative Localization Improvement Using Distance Information in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

In vehicular ad hoc networks (VANets), a precise localization system is a crucial factor for several critical safety applications. The global positioning system (GPS) is commonly used to determine the vehicles’ position estimation. However, it has unwanted errors yet that can be worse in some areas, such as urban street canyons and indoor parking lots, making it inaccurate for most critical safety applications. In this work, we present a new position estimation method called cooperative vehicle localization improvement using distance information (CoVaLID), which improves GPS positions of nearby vehicles and minimize their errors through an extended Kalman filter to execute Data Fusion using GPS and distance information. Our solution also uses distance information to assess the position accuracy related to three different aspects: the number of vehicles, vehicle trajectory, and distance information error. For that purpose, we use a weighted average method to put more confidence in distance information given by neighbors closer to the target. We implement and evaluate the performance of CoVaLID using real-world data, as well as discuss the impact of different distance sensors in our proposed solution. Our results clearly show that CoVaLID is capable of reducing the GPS error by 63%, and 53% when compared to the state-of-the-art VANet location improve (VLOCI) algorithm.