RTK Latency Estimation and Compensation Method for Vehicle Navigation System

Latency occurs in RTK, where the measured position actually outputs past position when compared to the measured time. This latency has an adverse effect on the navigation accuracy. In the present study, a system that estimates the latency of RTK and compensates the position error induced by the latency was implemented. To estimate the latency, the speed obtained from an odometer and the speed calculated from the position change of RTK were used. The latency was estimated with a modified correlator where the speed from odometer is shifted by a sample until to find best fit with speed from RTK. To compensate the position error induced by the latency, the current position was calculated from the speed and heading of RTK. To evaluate the performance of the implemented method, the data obtained from an actual vehicle was applied to the implemented system. The results of the experiment showed that the latency could be estimated with an error of less than 12 ms. The minimum data acquisition time for the stable estimation of the latency was up to 55 seconds. In addition, when the position was compensated based on the estimated latency, the position error decreased by at least 53.6% compared with that before the compensation.