Supporting GNSS Baseband Using Smartphone IMU and Ultra-Tight Integration

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that consumer-grade smartphone IMUs can effectively support GNSS baseband processing through ultra-tight integration, enhancing navigation performance with minimal additional hardware.

Contribution

It introduces a cascaded ultra-tightly coupled GNSS/INS system using smartphone sensors to improve GNSS baseband processing, showing practical viability with low-cost hardware.

Findings

Enhanced GNSS tracking accuracy in field tests

Improved carrier-based positioning performance

Effective integration with low-cost smartphone IMUs

Abstract

A great surge in the development of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) excavates the potential for prosperity in many state-of-the-art technologies, e.g., autonomous ground vehicle navigation. Nevertheless, the GNSS is vulnerable to various ground interferences, which significantly break down the continuity of the navigation system. Meanwhile, the GNSS-based next-generation navigation devices are being developed to be smaller, more low-cost, and lightweight, as the commercial market forecasts. This work aims to answer whether the smartphone inertial measurement unit (IMU) is sufficient to support the GNSS baseband. Thus, a cascaded ultra-tightly coupled GNSS/inertial navigation system (INS) technique, where consumer-level smartphone sensors are used, is applied to improve the baseband of GNSS software-defined radios (SDRs). A Doppler value is predicted based on an integrated extended Kalman filter (EKF) navigator where the pseudorange-state-based measurements of GNSS and INS are fused. It is used to assist numerically controlled oscillators (NCOs) in the GNSS baseband. Then, an ultra-tight integration platform is built with the upgraded GNSS SDR, of which baseband processing is integrated with INS mechanization. Finally, tracking and carrier-based positioning performances are assessed in the proposed platform for the smartphone-IMU-aided GNSS baseband via kinematic field tests. The experimental results prove that extra hardware with only a few dollars instead of more expensive ones can improve the GNSS baseband efficiently.