Performance Evaluation of the RTK-GNSS Navigating under Different Landscape

The navigation of autonomous vehicles depends on various sensors. One of the technologies that assist in the vehicles position localization and navigation is the Global Positioning System (GPS). Enhancement of the GPS technology reveals the application of Real Time Kinematics (RTK)-GPS to achieve higher accuracy based on corrections sent from a base station to the receiver. However, there is limited evaluation of the performance of the RTK-GPS when the vehicle is travelling in land area that is obstructed by buildings and also in uneven landscape. Hence, the purpose of this work is to conduct an experimental and comparative study to evaluate the performance of the RTK-GPS in flat-unobstructed, uneven-unobstructed and uneven-obstructed situations respectively. Three locations that possess the respective landscape characteristics in the state of Selangor, Malaysia were chosen to conduct the experiments. Results of logged RTK coordinates were compared with coordinates of the actual path travelled by the vehicle using statistical methods. In addition, the quality indicators of the coordinates logged were also evaluated. The results show that navigation on flat-unobstructed and uneven-unobstructed landscape has similar performances with floating coordinates range of errors.