Development of a simulation tool for collaborative navigation systems

Collaborative Positioning (CP) describes a technique in which a group of dynamic nodes (pedestrians, vehicles, etc.) equipped with different sensors can increase their precision of the Positioning Navigation and Timing (PNT) information by exchanging navigation information as well as performing measurements between nodes or to elements of the environment. In addition, the elements of the environment (landmarks, buildings, etc.) are also considered in the network as a set of fixed nodes with known or only partially known coordinates. Hence, the navigation system can be considered as a geodetic network in which some of the nodes are changing their position. In this paper, we will discuss the implementation of a simulation tool to evaluate the benefits of collaborative positioning. The fact that several multi-sensor systems are included in the navigation situation, brings the necessity of a sensor measurement fusion algorithm for the parameter estimation of the different nodes. Here, we implement a batch algorithm that enables an easy study of correlations and dependencies between different parameters as well as the identification of critical observations in the sensor network for the overall performance. The current status of implementation is discussed and illustrated with a typical 2D car navigation scenario.