Stochastic modeling with robust Kalman filter for real-time kinematic GPS single-frequency positioning

Abstract The centimeter-level positioning accuracy of real-time kinematic (RTK) depends on correctly resolving integer carrier-phase ambiguities. To improve the success rate of ambiguity resolution and obtain reliable positioning results, an enhanced Kalman filtering procedure has been developed. Based on a posteriori residuals of measurements and state predictions, the measurement noise variance–covariance matrix for double-differenced measurements is adaptively estimated, rather than approximated by an empirical function which uses satellite elevation angle as input. Since, in real-world situations, unexpected outliers and carrier-phase outages can degrade the filter performance, a stochastic model based on robust Kalman filtering is proposed, for which the double-differenced measurement noise variance–covariance matrix is computed empirically with a modified version of the IGG (Institute of Geodesy and Geophysics) III method in order to detect and identify outliers. The performance of the proposed method is assessed by two tests, one with simulated data and one with real data. In addition, the performance of F-ratio and W-ratio tests as proxies for the success of ambiguity fixing is investigated. Experimental results reveal that the proposed method can improve the reliability and robustness of relative kinematic positioning for simulation scenarios as well as in a real urban test.