Improvement of Reliability Determination Performance of Real Time Kinematic Solutions Using Height Trajectory

Autonomous driving support systems and self-driving cars require the determination of reliable vehicle positions with high accuracy. The real time kinematic (RTK) algorithm with global navigation satellite system (GNSS) is generally employed to obtain highly accurate position information. Because RTK can estimate the fix solution, which is a centimeter-level positioning solution, it is also used as an indicator of the position reliability. However, in urban areas, the degradation of the GNSS signal environment poses a challenge. Multipath noise caused by surrounding tall buildings degrades the positioning accuracy. This leads to large errors in the fix solution, which is used as a measure of reliability. We propose a novel position reliability estimation method by considering two factors; one is that GNSS errors are more likely to occur in the height than in the plane direction; the other is that the height variation of the actual vehicle travel path is small compared to the amount of movement in the horizontal directions. Based on these considerations, we proposed a method to detect a reliable fix solution by estimating the height variation during driving. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, an evaluation test was conducted in an urban area of Tokyo. According to the evaluation test, a reliability judgment rate of 99% was achieved in an urban environment, and a plane accuracy of less than 0.3 m in RMS was achieved. The results indicate that the accuracy of the proposed method is higher than that of the conventional fix solution, demonstratingits effectiveness.