Overbounding Revisited: Toward a More Practical Approach for Error Modeling in Safety-Critical Applications

J. Rife, B. Pervan

Abstract:	Overbounding navigation measurement error is essential to ensuring integrity for safety-of-life applications. Most existing overbounding methods rely on representing the actual measurement error distribution with a continuous probability distribution model (e.g. a Gaussian). A key limitation of these methods is validation using empirical data, since it is not immediately evident how to develop tests to establish the conservatism of a continuous distribution using a very large (and continuously growing) population of statistical samples. This problem is particularly acute in the distribution tails, where comparatively little statistical data is available. We propose a discretized overbounding methodology as a practical solution for safety validation. With a discrete overbound, it is possible to (1) define a clear and consistent set of empirical validation tests and to (2) introduce a distribution shape that directly accounts for uncertainty in modeling the distribution’s far tails.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 22nd International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2009) September 22 - 25, 2009 Savannah International Convention Center Savannah, GA
Pages:	1225 - 1235
Cite this article:	Rife, J., Pervan, B., "Overbounding Revisited: Toward a More Practical Approach for Error Modeling in Safety-Critical Applications," Proceedings of the 22nd International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2009), Savannah, GA, September 2009, pp. 1225-1235.
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