A Light-Weight Smartphone GPS Error Model for Simulation

This paper proposes a stochastic model for the Global Positioning System (GPS) position errors on smartphones in urban canyons. The need to simulate such errors arises in pedestrian to vehicle communications, for example, which enable a new way to protect vulnerable road users. Studying this technology requires accurate modeling of the GPS precision on portable devices, e.g., smartphones since they share pedestrians' location information with vehicles for collision avoidance. The model is derived from and calibrated with pedestrian GPS traces collected from New York City. We show that the model produces GPS error samples with similar spatial and temporal correlation as in the collected field data.