Device and method for autonomous positioning of vehicles

A positioning device configured to determine the location of a vehicle from positioning signals broadcasted by at least one constellation of satellites, the vehicle being stationary or moving on the roads of a given network, the positioning device comprising:

• a first unit configured, at a given measurement time, to determine a plurality of possible current positions of the vehicle and to determine a plurality of time stamps, the plurality of time stamps being determined within a given time interval, the first unit being further configured to:
• generate, for each possible current position of the vehicle, local replicas of positioning signals, each of the local replicas being associated with an early, a prompt and a late point of each time stamp of the plurality of time stamps and with a satellite in view of the at least one constellation of satellites;
• receive, at each time stamp of the plurality of time stamps, positioning signals broadcasted by at least three satellites in view of the at least one constellation of satellites;
• process, for each possible current position of the vehicle, for each time stamp of the plurality of time stamps, and for each satellite in view, a correlation function between a received positioning signal and the corresponding generated local replica at the early, prompt and late points;
• a second unit configured to:
• for each satellite, use the correlation results to determine a common error to all the satellites,
• for each satellite, each position and each time stamp, determine a corrected correlation result using the said common error and the early, prompt and late points of the correlation results,
• determine, for each possible current position of the vehicle, multi-satellite likelihoods, each of the multi-satellite likelihoods being determined for a given time stamp from the quadratic sum of the corrected correlation results;
• determine a most likely position and a most likely time stamp among the plurality of possible current positions and among the plurality of time stamps, respectively, by comparing the multi-satellite likelihoods.