iRTK - Inertially Aided RTK for Robust and Precise Positioning

Centimetre accurate positioning availability with GNSS real-time-kinematic (RTK) shall be increased in urban environments from the current state-of-the-art of 50-70 % to >99 %. This allows GNSS to act as an enabling technology for e.g. autonomous cars, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), augmented reality and many more, which today do not rely on GNSS due to low reliability of current GPS RTK. The ambitious goal shall be achieved by using GPS and Galileo signals on L1/E1 and L5/E5a aided with an inertial measurement unit (IMU). The IMU is used to realize an ultra-tightly coupled receiver employing synthetic aperture processing and to incorporate the IMU within the RTK algorithm to reliable detect cycle slips. Sophisticated IMU error modelling allows the use of cost efficient IMUs.