Continuous Navigation of an Inland Vessel with a Synthetic GNSS Antenna

Abstract

This paper describes a concept to obtain a continuous navigation and position solution of inland vessels based on a multi-GNSS antenna system. Also known as, “Virtual Receiver” we utilize this approach as an alternative method with respect to a common dead reckoning procedure. Such an approach strengthens the geometry of visible GNSS satellites immediatelyby up to 50%. At the same time, dilution of precision values improve by up to 40%. Hence, continuous navigation solution under difficult and challenging environmental conditions improves or is even possible. Specific experiments, obtained on a trip from Hannover westward on the Mittelland Canal with the inland vessel “MS Jenny” prove that various quality measures as well as the noise of the position estimates reduce significantly by up to 0.4 m. The position availability for code based navigation reaches 94.5% w.r.t classical single point positioning with 77%.