Open AccessQuantification of road grade to improve the estimation of fuel consumptions using the global positioning system
Author(s) -
Li Ming,
Yu Lei,
Song Guohua
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
iet intelligent transport systems
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.579
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1751-9578
pISSN - 1751-956X
DOI - 10.1049/iet-its.2017.0081
Subject(s) - estimation , automotive engineering , transport engineering , computer science , fuel efficiency , environmental science , engineering , systems engineering
Since the geodetic height data is as rough as in metres collected by the consumer grade global positioning system (GPS) receiver, it is difficult to accurately estimating the road grade. In this study, the research attempted to develop a simple and practical approach to quantify the road grade. First, the characteristics of the raw GPS data was analysed, and a data cleaning and correction method was designed to improve the data quality. Then the study developed a method for calculating the road grade by dividing GPS points into pools. It was shown that the average difference between the road grade generated by the study and by the field measurement is only 0.1%. Finally, the study analysed the precision of the fuel consumption estimation when the road grade was taken into consideration. The results showed that the precision increased by 11.8, 10.0 or 2.8%, respectively, when the road grade was positive, negative or both.