City Walk: Improving GPS Accuracy for Urban Pedestrians

This article looks at the difficulities of Global Positioning System (GPS)-based positioning for pedestrians in urban areas. Urban canyons create degradation in the accuracy and integrity of GPS ranging. They can also increase the geometric dilution of receiver precision. The article describes a novel approach involving a geographic information system (GIS) database containing the geometrical description of buildings in the area. The approach involves restricting the area of possible locations, mitigating multipath effects, matching the environment with GPS measurements, and employing models to compute accurate fixes. The intrinsic freedom of the pedestrian is maintained. The article then describes how this new method was implemented using GIS products which enabled the concept to be used as light middleware on mass market terminals such as personal navigation devices or personal digital assistants (PDAs). Results from tests conducted in several cities reveal significant improvements in the accuracy of GPS-based positioning.

• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/10485104
• Authors:
  • Prost, Jean-Baptiste
  • Godefroy, Baptiste
  • Terrenoir, Stephane
• Publication Date: 2008-8

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Print
• Features: Figures; Photos;
• Pagination: pp 32-37
• Serial:
  • GPS World
  • Volume: 19
  • Issue Number: 8
  • Publisher: Advanstar Communications, Incorporated
  • ISSN: 1048-5104

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Accuracy; Geographic information systems; Global Positioning System; Pedestrian movement; Pedestrians; Tourism; Urban areas
• Subject Areas: Operations and Traffic Management; Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Public Transportation;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01111629
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: UC Berkeley Transportation Library
• Files: BTRIS, TRIS, ATRI
• Created Date: Sep 29 2008 3:15PM