A quality control approach for GPS-based automatic vehicle location and navigation systems

The federated filter, which is a special form of decentralized filters has shown some promising features regarding optimality and other practical aspects. The theory of the federated architecture is discussed. Emphasis is placed on the applications in the field of vehicle navigation using Global Positioning System (GPS). During both theoretical and practical research, it is concluded that federated designs suit optimality needs for systems output and allow the use of existing stand-alone software of individual sensors in an integrated sense without any major modifications. Quality control is feasible, as a malfunction of one of the sensors would be detected and identified before the contamination of the global (combined) output of the system, and hence isolation of errors is feasible in real-time mode.