Guaranteed GNSS-based Road Charging Applications through User-Level Integrity

Integrity plays a fundamental role in the feasibility of 'liability critical' applications. Road charging, e.g. road tolling in urban zones or on highways, represents a series of liability critical applications where a guarantee in integrity could be a true enabler: being the mechanism that prevents the incorrect charging of users and enabling the advancement of these applications using GNSS such as Galileo and EGNOS that provide integrity mechanisms. However, the integrity of the end user position is not guaranteed by the EGNOS and Galileo integrity services alone as provided. Algorithms have been developed to supply a guarantee on the performance attainable at the user level through the provision of a horizontal protection level that responds to local user conditions such as multipath or interference. In addition, an application has been developed that implements road charging mechanisms based on the availability of user-level integrity. Results obtained show that the user-level integrity algorithms provided the required level of integrity guarantee and granularity of the horizontal protection levels necessary for executing urban and rural (highway) road charging. In addition, the road charging application developed shows that the current application domain requirements can be met through the provision of guaranteed integrity and that further reductions in the horizontal protection levels along with increased signal availability will enable future road charging modalities.