Radio Positioning and Tracking of High-Speed Devices in 5G NR Networks: System Concept and Performance

Abstract

This paper addresses high-efficiency radio positioning and tracking of high-speed objects in emerging fifth generation (5G) new radio (NR) networks. Methods and system concept are described, building on network side reference signal measurements and data fusion and tracking. Also realistic performance results are provided and analyzed, in the context of mmWave NR deployment for high-speed trains at 30 GHz carrier frequency. It is shown that below 3 m positioning accuracy can be achieved with 95% availability, which fits in the positioning performance requirements for traffic monitoring and control, as specified by the 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP). Moreover, the given positioning performance can be achieved without assuming clock synchronization between the baseband units (BBUs) at the network side. In fact, the proposed approach enables sub-nanosecond estimation accuracy of network clock offsets, which benefits various radio resource management (RRM) functionalities of the network for increased spectral efficiency.