IJCAS

To use the Global Positioning System (GPS) carrier phase measurement for precise positioning, the integer ambiguities at the early stage of most algorithms must be determined. Furthermore, if a precise positioning is to be applied to real time navigation, fast determination and validation methods for integer ambiguity are essential. In this paper, the Wald test that simultaneously determines and validates integer ambiguities is used with assistance of the Inertial Navigation System (INS) to improve its performance. As the Wald test proceeds, it assigns a higher probability to the candidate that is considered to be true at each time step. The INS information is added during the Wald test process. Large performance improvements were achieved in convergence time as well as in requiring fewer observable GPS satellites. To test the performance improvement of the Wald test with the INS information, experimental tests were conducted using a ground vehicle. The vehicle moved in a prescribed trajectory and observed seven GPS satellites. To verify the effect of the INS information on the Wald test, the convergence times were compared with cases that considered the INS information and cases that did not consider the INS information. The results show that the benefits of using the INS were emphasized as fewer GPS satellites were observable. The performance improvement obtained by the proposed algorithm was shown through the fast convergence to the true hypothesis when using the INS measurements.

Keywords: Fault detection, GPS, INS, integer ambiguity, real-time kinematic.