A new technique for quality control in GPS kinematic positioning

Quality control of information acquired from GPS has become a prime concern to civil users in the field of kinematic positioning. This is mainly because GPS data is subject to blunders that, if left undetected, would significantly degrade the overall performance and threaten the accuracy, reliability and repeatability of the results. With the current revolutionary development of GPS-based navigation systems, quality control of GPS output has been extensively considered. Several tools, like Dilution of Precision measures (DOPs) and confidence regions, have been used to monitor the quality of GPS results. Also, various Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring (RAIM) techniques have been developed to serve as quality control flags to be raised if GPS measurements are identified as faulty or inconsistent. Therefore, The University of Calgary and Pulsearch Navigation Systems Inc. have recently developed and implemented a new quality control technique to be employed in real-time kinematic GPS or in post-mission processing. The new technique is a part of an integrated quality control system which employs various statistical tools to control the quality of input measurements and rigorously quantify the precision and accuracy of a solution as well as its reliability and repeatability. Using this new technique, kinematic system designers, GPS-based systems or otherwise, will be able to obtain a full visual real-time and post-mission representation of the quality of their system output with which valid decisions may be made regarding acceptance or rejection of the results