Why GPS makes distances bigger than they are
Peter Ranacher, Richard Brunauer, Wolfgang Trutschnig, Stefan, Christiaan Van der Spek, Siegfried Reich

TL;DR
This paper reveals that GPS measurement errors cause a systematic overestimation of distances in movement data, especially at high sampling frequencies, and introduces a method to assess data quality based on error autocorrelation.
Contribution
It provides a mathematical explanation for the overestimation bias and introduces a novel approach to measure error autocorrelation in high-frequency GPS data.
Findings
GPS measurement error causes systematic distance overestimation.
Error autocorrelation can be used as a quality measure for GPS data.
Autocorrelation of errors is significant in real-world trajectories.
Abstract
Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), such as the Global Positioning System (GPS), are among the most important sensors for movement analysis. GPS is widely used to record the trajectories of vehicles, animals and human beings. However, all GPS movement data are affected by both measurement and interpolation error. In this article we show that measurement error causes a systematic bias in distances recorded with a GPS: the distance between two points recorded with a GPS is -- on average -- bigger than the true distance between these points. This systematic `overestimation of distance' becomes relevant if the influence of interpolation error can be neglected, which is the case for movement sampled at high frequencies. We provide a mathematical explanation of this phenomenon and we illustrate that it functionally depends on the autocorrelation of GPS measurement error (). We…
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Taxonomy
TopicsHuman Mobility and Location-Based Analysis · Data Management and Algorithms · Automated Road and Building Extraction
