Mitigating GPS Error in Mobile Environments

The authors study the problem of accurately determining the position of a mobile device using imprecise off-the-shelf GPS devices. Existing work has not yet explored the impact of mobility on GPS error for off-the-shelf devices. They demonstrate that a naive use of GPS in mobile situations can lead to significant errors. Based on both stationary and mobile vehicular experiments, they identify four distinct sources of measurement error, resulting in a surprising 49.0 m of error while traveling at highway speeds of 100 km/h. they quantify the error into systematic error (44.7 m) and random error (4.3 m). They also show how simple techniques can significantly reduce systematic error, yielding up to a ten-fold reduction of error in mobile GPS measurements.