On-road trajectory generation from GPS data: A particle filtering/smoothing application

Many studies in target localization and tracking use GPS measurements as ground truth. These GPS locations might be in conflict with computed estimates in applications where road network information is available (and employed in the estimation procedure). This paper proposes to use particle methods to generate on-road trajectories that can be used as improved ground truth for such road constrained estimation schemes. A bootstrap particle filter and three different particle smoothers are utilized to obtain kinematic target state estimates. The particle smoothers require important adjustments for their implementation in the resulting hybrid state space. The performances of the presented methods are compared on challenging real data obtained from an urban area. Although particle filters and smoothers can be applied to general localization problems, with arbitrary sensors, we concentrate on GPS measurements, motivated by an application in cellular network systems.