Investigate GPS Signal Loss Handling Strategies for a Low Cost Multi-GPS system based Kalman Filter

Navigation was easier nowadays due to the advanced GPS system. Human activity relied on the GPS system in everyday life especially for traveling by car. One issue of using GPS system in the urban area was the GPS signal loss caused by skyscrapers that block a GPS module from satellites. The Kalman filter could help improving location tracking for a car. In this research, the multi-GPS system was developed for experiments. Kalman filter was defined and used for tracking the car location. Collected latitude and longitude data from GPS module was converted into UTM coordinate to suit Kalman filter algorithm. There were two proposed handling strategies in this research which were the skip and frozen handling strategies. Multi-GPS system was mounted on top of the car. Then, a car was driven, and the GPS data was collected for experiments. Signal loss points was created by removing or freezing points in GPS data. Then, Kalman filter was experimented for both cases. The result showed that Kalman filter could track the location with some error in both cases but if the signal loss points were increased, then, the skip strategy showed less fluctuations in the results. Therefore, the skip strategy has more promising result than the frozen strategy.