New method for single epoch, single frequency land vehicle attitude determination using low-end GPS receiver

Abstract

Stand-alone, unaided, single frequency, single epoch attitude determination is the most challenging case of GNSS compass processing. For land vehicle applications, the baseline approximately lies in the plane of the local geodetic horizon. This provides an important constraint that can be exploited to directly aid the ambiguity resolution process. We fully integrate the constraint into the observation equations, which are transformed orthogonally. Our method can acquire the high-quality float solution by means of a heading search strategy. The fixed solution is obtained by weighted constrained integer least squares for each possible heading. The correct solution is identified by three consecutive steps: Kolmogorov–Smirnov test, heading verification, and global minimizer of the fixed ambiguity objective function. The analysis focuses on single frequency, single epoch land vehicle attitude determination using low-end GPS receivers with very low precision of carrier phase and code measurements. The error analysis is given for choosing a proper baseline length in practical application. Experimental results demonstrate that this scheme can improve the ambiguity success rate for very short baseline.