Improved Localization for Android Smartphones Based on Integration of Raw GNSS Measurements and IMU Sensors

Abstract

Due to the rapid developments in wireless communications and mobile computing, mobile devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) and Smartphones are becoming increasingly popular. Services based on users location have received vast attention, because the mobile devices are carried by the users almost anywhere and anytime. A wide variety of important services for mobile users such as navigation services are provided by the Location-based services (LBS). Thanks to LBS, fleet management and tracking people and animals was first introduced in 2004. Recent popularity of LBS emphasizes the necessity of continuous and user-friendly approaches for such services. In other words, the current challenge in LBS is to design a platform that can provide real-time localization which is able to provide an accurate user location in different environment. Modern generations of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers mounted in smartphones provide location services from different platforms (e.g GPS from USA, GLONASS from Russia, BeiDou from China) which enable wide variety of sources for LBS. To provide accurate localization that can enhance LBS, raw measurements for GNSS receivers are required. To acquire these raw measurements, Google introduced the Android N Operating system. In this paper, we have introduced an approach that will make use of the raw GNSS measurements and the inertial sensors employed in the smartphones to improve users position. Huawei mate 8 was used as a testing platform. Different scenarios will be investigated. One scenario using inertial sensors only and the other one will be using extracted raw GPS measurements and inertial sensors with GPS outage for 10 seconds. The integrated solution using inertial sensors measurements and GPS raw measurements will be integrated using Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) in a loosely coupled approach which improved the acquired position.