On Robust Statistics for GNSS Single Point Positioning

Abstract

Navigation problems are generally solved applying least-squares (LS) adjustments. Techniques based on LS can be shown to perform optimally when the system noise is Gaussian distributed and the parametric model is accurately known. Unfortunately, real world problems usually contain unexpectedly large errors, so-called outliers, that violate the noise model assumption, leading to a spoiled solution estimation. In this work, the framework of robust statistics is explored in order to provide a robust solution to the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) single point positioning (SPP) problem. Considering that GNSS observables may be contaminated by erroneous measurements, we survey most popular approaches for robust regression and how they can be adapted into a general methodology for robust SPP.