A Multi-Vehicle Cooperative Localization Method Based on Belief Propagation in Satellite Denied Environment

Abstract

The global navigation satellite system (GNSS) is currently being used extensively in the navigation system of vehicles. However, the GNSS signal will be faded or blocked in complex road environments, which will lead to a decrease in positioning accuracy. Owing to the higher-precision synchronization provided in the sixth generation (6G) network, the errors of ranging-based positioning technologies can be effectively reduced. At the same time, the use of terahertz in 6G allows excellent resolution of range and angle, which offers unique opportunities for multi-vehicle cooperative localization in a GNSS denied environment. This paper introduces a multi-vehicle cooperative localization method. In the proposed method, the location estimations of vehicles are derived by utilizing inertial measurement and then corrected by exchanging the beliefs with adjacent vehicles and roadside units. The multi-vehicle cooperative localization problem is represented using a factor graph. An iterative algorithm based on belief propagation is applied to perform the inference over the factor graph. The results demonstrate that our proposed method can offer a considerable capability enhancement on localization accuracy.

Keywords

cooperative localization / belief propagation / factor graph / inertial navigation system / internet of vehicles