Gaussian–Student’s t Mixture Distribution-Based Robust Kalman Filter for Global Navigation Satellite System/Inertial Navigation System/Odometer Data Fusion

Multi-source heterogeneous information fusion based on the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)/Inertial Navigation System (INS)/odometer is an important technical means to solve the problem of navigation and positioning in complex environments. The measurement noise of the GNSS/INS/odometer integrated navigation system is complex and non-stationary; it approximates a Gaussian distribution in an open-sky environment, and it has heavy-tailed properties in the GNSS challenging environment. This work models the measurement noise and one-step prediction as the Gaussian and Student’s t mixture distribution to adjust to different scenarios. The mixture distribution is formulated as the hierarchical Gaussian form by introducing Bernoulli random variables, and the corresponding hierarchical Gaussian state-space model is constructed. Then, the mixing probability of Gaussian and Student’s t distributions could adjust adaptively according to the real-time kinematic solution state. Based on the novel distribution, a robust variational Bayesian Kalman filter is proposed. Finally, two vehicle test cases conducted in GNSS-friendly and challenging environments demonstrate that the proposed robust Kalman filter with the Gaussian–Student’s t mixture distribution can better model heavy-tailed non-Gaussian noise. In challenging environments, the proposed algorithm has position root mean square (RMS) errors of 0.80 m, 0.62 m, and 0.65 m in the north, east, and down directions, respectively. With the assistance of inertial sensors, the positioning gap caused by GNSS outages has been compensated. During seven periods of 60 s simulated GNSS data outages, the RMS position errors in the north, east, and down directions were 0.75 m, 0.30 m, and 0.20 m, respectively.