Real-time tightly coupled GNSS and IMU integration via Factor Graph Optimization

Reliable positioning in dense urban environments remains challenging due to frequent GNSS signal blockage, multipath, and rapidly varying satellite geometry. While factor graph optimization (FGO)-based GNSS-IMU fusion has demonstrated strong robustness and accuracy, most formulations remain offline. In this work, we present a real-time tightly coupled GNSS-IMU FGO method that enables causal state estimation via incremental optimization with fixed-lag marginalization, and we evaluate its performance in a highly urbanized GNSS-degraded environment using the UrbanNav dataset.

Radu-Andrei Cioaca, Paul Irofti, Cristian Rusu, Gianluca Caparra, Andrei-Alexandru Marinache, Florin Stoican · 2026