Matching GPS Observations to Locations on a Digital Map

Abstract

GPS based navigation and route guidance systems are becoming increasingly popular among bus operators, fleet managers and travelers. To provide this functionality, one has to have a GPS receiver, a digital map of the traveled network and software that can associate (match) the user’s position with a location on the digital map. Matching the user’s location has to be done even when the GPS location and the underlying digital map have inaccuracies and errors. There are several approaches for solving this map matching task. Some only match the user’s location to the nearest street node while others are able to locate the user at specific location on the traveled street segment. In this paper a topologically based matching procedure is presented. The procedure was tested with low quality GPS data to assess its robustness. The performance of the algorithms was found to produce outstanding results