Mike Koivisto*, Aki Hakkarainen*, Mário Costa†, Petteri Kela†, Kari Leppänen† and Mikko Valkama*
* Tampere University of Technology, Finland
† Huawei Technologies, Finland
In this article, the prospects and enabling technolo- gies for high-efficiency device positioning and location-aware communications in emerging 5G networks are reviewed. We will first describe some key technical enablers and demonstrate through concrete ray-tracing and map based evaluations that positioning accuracies below one meter can be accomplished by properly fusing direction and delay related measurements on the network side, even when tracking moving devices. We will then discuss the possibilities and opportunities that such high- efficiency positioning capabilities can offer, not only for location- based services in general, but also for the radio access network itself. We will particularly demonstrate that geometric location- based beamforming becomes technically feasible, which can offer substantially reduced reference symbol overhead compared to classical full channel state information (CSI)-based beamforming. At the same time, substantial power savings can be realized in future wideband 5G networks where acquiring full CSI calls for wideband reference signals while position estimation and tracking can, in turn, be accomplished with narrowband pilots.
Published in IEEE Communications Magazine
Videos and Demonstrations
3D Drone Tracking
3D UE position tracking with the Pos&Sync EKF and classical DoA-only EKF in an example drone trajectory on the METIS-based Madrid map. First, the drone takes off from the ground, and in the middle of the trajectory it performs a landing and short halt before a new take-off. In addition to the 3D positioning, the clock offsets of the phase-locked LoS-ANs are also tracked within the proposed filters, and these estimation errors are illustrated in the figure on the right.
UE Tracking with Only One AN
2D UE position tracking with the Pos&Sync EKF and Pos&Clock EKF in an example vehicle trajectory through the METIS-based Madrid map. Despite the fact that DoA and ToA estimates only from one LoS-AN are fused into position estimate, the performance of both filters is relatively good, while the clock offsets of the phase-locked LoS-ANs are also estimated with interestingly high accuracy. The LoS-ANs’ clock offsets are illustrated in the figure on the right.