Effect of heteroscedasticity and heterogeneousness on outlier detection for geodetic networks

The robustness of an outlier detection method strongly depends on the weights of observations, i.e., the type of the stochastic model applied (homoscedasticity, heteroscedasticity and heterogeneousness). In this paper, we have investigated how the reliability of the robust methods and tests for outliers changes depending on the weights of the observations in geodetic networks. Furthermore, the contribution of the directions and distances to horizontal control network with regard to reliability are investigated separately. The concept of a breakdown point is used as a global measure of robustness against outliers. The mean success rate (MSR) is found to be a practical tool for confirming the breakdown point. Many different “good” data samples are generated for each network and then deliberately contaminated using a Monte-Carlo simulation. Six robust methods and Baarda’s test are applied to the corrupted samples and the degree of corruption is varied. The performance of each method is measured using both local and global MSRs. Our research shows: (1) The MSRs of Baarda’s test change depending on the strength of the heteroscedasticity, but do not change for trilateration and leveling networks, (2) the global MSRs of robust methods do not differ considerably from the local ones