Improving Integrity and Reliability of Map Matching Techniques

Map-matching (MM) is a technique that attempts to locate an estimated vehicle position on road network. Many map-matching algorithms have been developed and widely incorporated into GPS/DR vehicle navigation systems for both commercial and experimental ITS applications. However, the reliability of these systems is still a problem because vehicle position may be located to an incorrect road section due to large vehicle positioning errors which occur frequently in urban areas. This incorrect locating is called a mismatch. To improve map matching techniques, it is necessary to enhance the ability of mismatch detection and to reduce the chance of mismatch, which are referred as integrity and reliability respectively. New techniques are developed in this paper to improve the integrity and reliability of map matching techniques. The new techniques have been integrated with a GPS/DR system and extensively tested in Hong Kong. Testing results demonstrate that the performance of the new integrated GPS/DR system is significantly improved in terms of its accuracy, coverage and reliability.