UWB for Navigation in GNSS Compromised Environments

Kai Dierenbach, Steve Ostrowski, Grzegorz Jozkow, Charles K. Toth, Dorota A. Grejner-Brzezinska, Zoltan Koppanyi

Peer Reviewed

Abstract:	This paper presents the usage of Ultra-Wideband (UWB) technology as a standalone and integrated navigation solution in environments where GNSS signal reception is limited or impossible. Every satellite based positioning system needs, among other requirements, an unobstructed line of sight to four or more satellites to operate with reasonable accuracy. In urban, outdoor or transition environments with overhead obstructions such as buildings, trees and other impediments, only inertial systems, extended concepts like Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) or other sophisticated local solutions, can be used for relative localization. Inertial Measurement Units (IMU) always contain some level of drift which increase positioning error with time, other systems need additional expensive hardware which lead to other and often more complicated errors to model, as well. UWB radio networks are low-power, low-cost and quickly to set up as a local positioning systems, and can be seen as the intermediary sensors between GNSS and IMU. The investigation of the UWB technology was performed in two field scenarios, an open sky test and a GNSS compromised test. To analyze the system’s navigation solutions, comparisons were made with GNSS and integrated solutions. The varying processing and calibration procedures for this two outdoor scenarios were also investigated. The circular lateration principle was used to estimate the location of a moving rover equipped with a UWB radio; this overdetermined problem was then solved with the Least Squares Method (LS). A fully centralized Kalman filter solution was applied for smoothing the standalone UWB trajectory and in integrating data with a Honeywell HG1700 IMU. The ground truth, used for the evaluation of the system, was a real-time-kinematic (RTK) GNSS solution; with support of a Leica TS06plus Total Station to assist in GNSS compromised environments. The UWB standalone method provided a 2D Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of around 10 cm for Non-Line-of-Sight (NLOS), GNSS compromised environments and 6 cm for Clear-Line-ofSight (CLOS), open sky environments.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 28th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS+ 2015) September 14 - 18, 2015 Tampa Convention Center Tampa, Florida
Pages:	2380 - 2389
Cite this article:	Dierenbach, Kai, Ostrowski, Steve, Jozkow, Grzegorz, Toth, Charles K., Grejner-Brzezinska, Dorota A., Koppanyi, Zoltan, "UWB for Navigation in GNSS Compromised Environments," Proceedings of the 28th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS+ 2015), Tampa, Florida, September 2015, pp. 2380-2389.
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