The Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)/Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) Loosely Coupled (LC) integration framework has been widely adopted due to its simple structure, but it relies on complete GNSS position and velocity solutions, and the rapid accumulation of IMU errors can easily lead to navigation failure when fewer than four satellites are visible. In this paper, GNSS Doppler observations are fused with IMU attitude information within an LC framework. An inter-satellite differential Doppler model is introduced, and the velocity obtained from the differential Doppler solution is transformed into the navigation frame using the IMU-derived attitude, enabling three-dimensional velocity estimation in the navigation frame even when only two satellites are available. Analysis of real vehicle data collected by the GREAT team at Wuhan University shows that the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) and the geometric relationship between the Satellite Difference Vector (SDV) and the Receiver Motion Direction (RMD) are the dominant factors affecting velocity accuracy. A multi-factor threshold screening strategy further indicates that when 40 and , the Root Mean Square (RMS) of the velocity error is approximately 0.3 m/s and the data retention rate exceeds 44%, achieving a good balance between accuracy and availability. The results indicate that, while maintaining a simple system structure, the proposed Doppler–IMU fusion method can significantly enhance velocity robustness and positioning continuity within an LC architecture under weak GNSS conditions (when more than two satellites are visible but standalone GNSS positioning is still unavailable), and is suitable for constructing low-cost, highly reliable integrated navigation systems.
Under regional environmental conditions such as open-pit mines and construction sites, there are usually fixed GNSS measurement points. Around these fixed stations, there are also mobile GNSS measurement modules. These mobile measurement modules offer advantages such as low power consumption, low cost, and large data volume. However, due to their low accuracy, these modules can only provide approximate positions as monitoring data, such as for vehicle management in open-pit mines. To extract more information from the existing large volume of low-accuracy data, it is necessary to process these low-accuracy data. Under conditions of the same time and space in a small area, factors affecting measurement accuracy can be comprehensively considered. By analyzing the temporal GNSS data within the same spatiotemporal small region and understanding the variation patterns of measurement errors, a general equation for measurement error variation can be formulated. Using filtering methods, the data quality can be improved. Through the analysis of the experimental data in this study, it was found that the variation patterns of measurement data obtained by devices of the same accuracy during the same time period are generally consistent. After applying filtering methods, the measurement accuracy of each station improved by up to approximately 95.9%, with a minimum improvement of approximately 84.4%. Under the condition of a 95% confidence level, the reliability increased by up to approximately 73.2%, with a minimum improvement of approximately 58.2%. These experimental results fully demonstrate that under regional spatiotemporal conditions, the temporal data obtained by GNSS measurement devices with similar accuracy exhibit similar error distribution patterns. Applying the same filtering method can significantly improve the accuracy and reliability of measurement data.