New Map-Matching Algorithm Using Virtual Track for Pedestrian Dead Reckoning

In this paper, a map-matching (MM) algorithm which combines an estimated position with digital road data is proposed. The presented algorithm using a virtual track is appropriate for a MEMS-based pedestrian dead reckoning (PDR) system, which can be used in mobile devices. Most of the previous MM algorithms are for car navigation systems and GPS-based navigation system, so existing MM algorithms are not appropriate for the pure DR-based pedestrian navigation system. The biggest problem of previous MM algorithms is that they cannot determine the correct road segment (link) due to the DR characteristics. In DR-based navigation system, the current position is propagated from the previous estimated position. This means that the MM result can be placed on a wrong link when MM algorithm fails to decide the correct link at once. It is a critical problem. Previous algorithms never overcome this problem because they did not consider pure DR characteristics. The MM algorithm using the virtual track is proposed to overcome this problem with improved accuracy. Performance of the proposed MM algorithm was verified by experiments.