Assessment of Android Network Positioning as an Alternative Source of Navigation for Drone Operations

Abstract

Applications of drones have increased significantly in the past decade for both indoor and outdoor operations. In order to assist autonomous drone navigation, there are numerous sensors installed onboard the vehicles. These include Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) chipsets, inertial sensors, barometer, lidar, radar and vision sensors. The two sensors used most often by drone autopilot controllers for absolute positioning are the GNSS chipsets and barometer. Although, for most outdoor operations, these sensors provide accurate and reliable position information, their accuracy, availability, and integrity deteriorate for indoor applications and in the presence of radio frequency interference (RFI), such as GNSS spoofing and jamming. Therefore, it is possible to derive network-based locations from Wi-Fi and cellular transmission. Although there have been many theoretical studies on network positioning, limited resources are available for the expected quantitative performance of these positioning methodologies. In this paper, the authors investigate both the horizontal and vertical accuracy of the Android network location engines under rural, suburban, and urban environments. The paper determines the horizontal location accuracy to be approximately 1637 m, 38 m, and 32 m in terms of 68% circular error probable (CEP) for rural, suburban, and urban environments, respectively, and the vertical accuracy to be 1.2 m and 4.6 m in terms of 68% CEP for suburban and urban environments, respectively. In addition, the availability and latency of the location engines are explored. Furthermore, the paper assesses the accuracy of the Android network location accuracy indicator for various drone operation environments. The assessed accuracies of the network locations provide a deeper insight into their potential for drone navigation.