Making the Best with GPS in Car Applications

Ralph Moussa

Abstract:	Since several years, European car manufacturers have done common work in order to improve safety and efficiency of transports. This was the goal of the PROMETHEUS program (PROgram for an European Traffic with Highest Efficiency and Unprecedented Safety). Among necessary technologies, the statement was made that a lot of systems were relying on the ability to localize vehicles correctly, it means with sufficient precision and availability for the aimed application. First steps consisted in examining existing localization systems like Loran-C, Syledis and map- matching technique. As GPS became reasonable for car applications from the economic point of view, some projects have been launched to evaluate the ability to satisfy the technical requirements. RENAULT and PSA have been involved in two studies with French electronic suppliers, with the following goals: - to develop the algorithms taking the best advantage of GPS (natural or differential), hybridized with low cost dead-reckoning sensors (magnetic heading or gyrometer), in order to meet the levels of precision and fix availability required by car applications, like guidance systems or fleet management - to realize prototypes and the measurement methodology to analyze the performances in various environments (city center, urban area, etc.) and to perform experiments on the Paris area. The results of these experiments show a significant improvement of the precision and the fix availability, compared to stand-alone GPS or DGPS. Hence the fix availability may be permanent and the fix precision may reach the few meters level, even in a very difficult environment.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 8th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1995) September 12 - 15, 1995 Palm Springs, CA
Pages:	1819 - 1823
Cite this article:	Moussa, Ralph, "Making the Best with GPS in Car Applications," Proceedings of the 8th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1995), Palm Springs, CA, September 1995, pp. 1819-1823.
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