Performance Evaluation Of Range Information Provided By Dedicated Short Range Communication (Dsrc) Radios

Dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) is a wireless communication protocol designed for automotive use. DSRC will also play a part in major changes to ground vehicle GNSS, if DSRC can provide ranges between two radios. Once the DSRC infrastructure is in place, every vehicle and intersection within a small range of a vehicle navigation system will become a extra "ground-based satellite" that can be used to update the navigation filter. This new method of ranging will be very useful in environments where limited GPS satellites are available. These areas include dense urban environments, areas of heavy foliage, and tunnels.This paper will cover the performance of DSRC based ranging. Two Multiband Configurable Networking Units (MCNU) provided by Kapsch will be used to evaluate the performance of DSRC based ranging. This paper will also cover how these ranges can be incorporated into a traditional global based navigation system.In order to test the performance of the radio based ranging, real data from the NCAT test track in Opelika, Alabama will be used. The NCAT track has a GPS base station broadcasting RTK corrections. The corrected GPS position and velocity is used as a baseline to judge error.