5G has the characteristics of high bandwidth, low latency and massive connections, which help to completely change the information infrastructure and bring the whole society into the era of intelligent Internet of things. In addition to information service, location service is also an important basic service need in the information society. With the booming growth of global 5G deployment and vertical applications, the industry urgently needs high-precision 5G positioning and 5G integrated out-of-band positioning technologies.
With full indoor and outdoor coverage, a variety of terminals, and strong application capabilities, mobile network is an ideal carrier of the basic positioning platform. In the 3G and 4G era, mobile positioning technologies emerged such as cell-assisted positioning and observed time difference of arrival (OTDOA), and out-of-band integrated positioning technologies such as GPS/AGPS appeared at the terminal and application side, which could better meet the needs of consumers' conventional positioning applications. However, there are still many problems in positioning accuracy, speed, and single-user location based services (LBS) integration, and there is also a big gap in meeting the diverse needs of vertical industries. Now, in order to solve these problems, 5G integrated positioning solution has been developed.
Pressing Needs
Positioning service scenarios are divided into two types: outdoor positioning and indoor positioning. Thanks to the development of satellite positioning, cellular-assisted positioning, digital map technology, and upper-layer applications over the years, the outdoor location service architecture equipped with satellite positioning and telecom network assisted positioning has matured. 5G outdoor positioning focuses on improving the positioning accuracy of outdoor base stations. Now many technologies such as UTDOA/RTT have been put into commercial use to improve positioning accuracy and system capacity.
However, due to the limited GPS satellite coverage and complicated indoor scenarios, there has been a lack of a dominant indoor positioning platform. Some local indoor positioning technologies, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, UWB, laser infrared and visual positioning, are limited to local scenarios. A ubiquitous, instant, universal and high-accuracy indoor positioning service platform is urgently needed in the industry, and various existing out-of-band positioning networks can be integrated and managed.
Solution
In response to the need for unified positioning in indoor scenarios, ZTE has launched an innovative 5G indoor integrated positioning solution, with the overall framework shown in Fig. 1.
ZTE's 5G indoor integrated positioning solution uses its latest indoor 5G NR and can provide basic 5G high-precision indoor positioning services in all scenarios. Leveraging 5G large bandwidth and multi-beam feature, 5G NR can support multiple positioning technologies such as ECID and UTDOA. The ECID positioning algorithm can achieve an accuracy of about one fourth to one third of inter-site distance, with the highest positioning accuracy of up to one meter in an ideal state of UTDOA.
ZTE 5G NR also provides cascading interfaces that can be rapidly cascaded to out-of-band Bluetooth/UWB positioning systems to implement 5G+UWB or Bluetooth AOA integrated positioning. The out-of-band positioning base station and the 5G intelligent indoor DAS equipment are integrated and co-located to fully reuse 5G NR power supply and transmission resources. They support plug-and-play, share the future maintenance resources, and provide the positioning of sub-meter level. Bluetooth AOA can reach a positioning accuracy of 30–50 cm, and UWB 20–30 cm.
Based on ZTE's innovative site-level computing power engine NodeEngine, BBU in the existing network can function as an intelligent edge base station only by inserting a computing power board into the BBU, so that a variety of value-added services can be easily deployed, including local LBS at the RAN side, 5G positioning engine, UWB/Bluetooth positioning engine and LBS services. And meanwhile, both 5G positioning engine and UWB/Bluetooth positioning engine can provide a unified open location interface to interconnect with third-party applications, thus meeting the LBS needs of the industry in a more flexible manner.
Commercialization
ZTE has partnered with operators and LBS industry players to actively promote the commercial use of 5G indoor integrated positioning solution and run commercial trials in shopping malls, transportation hubs, and intelligent manufacturing scenarios.
The Canton Tower Station Project (China Guangzhou Metro) uses the 5G Qcell high-precision indoor integrated positioning system to provide users with location applications. An administrator can use the terminal to open the map to view the locations of 5G terminals in real time, and view the traffic heat map and traffic distribution through the big data platform. In addition, the system provides an open API interface to interconnect with third-party applications, providing customers with location services such as accurate indoor navigation and discount pushes.
At the Grandview Mall in Guangzhou, a typical big shopping mall in China, the operator has rapidly deployed the 5G positioning service simply by upgrading the RAN system. The solution supports the latest Release 16 positioning techniques with the positioning accuracy reaching 2 meters in line-of-sight (LOS) conditions. Moreover, this project enables perfect interconnection between the local LBS server and the operator's mobile big data platform, so that the 5G local positioning service can be delivered quickly without any change to the core network.
China's Yunnan Shenhuo project adopts the applications of 5G, MEC, positioning and digital twin. 5G and MEC provide cloud-network service for the campus, while Bluetooth offers location-based service. This helps to create a model for the application of 5G+ industrial Internet in the field of non-ferrous metal processing. The solution combines advanced 5G, indoor positioning and visualization technologies with modern management to fully experience the personnel, equipment and environment in the factory, and establish an efficient connection to the huge environment of the factory area. The digital twin technology is used to complete 3D modeling of aluminum ingot yard, air compressor, laboratory, maintenance workshop, and alumina storage and transportation in the campus. According to the location information of people and things in the campus, the solution combines the operation of the production system in the factory area with enterprise management to realize optimal operation, control, and management of the enterprise, and provide services for the management of personnel, equipment and materials in the campus.
ZTE will continue to innovate in the solutions with its positioning industry partners, and deepen the integration of 5G positioning and the conventional LBS technologies such as satellite and Bluetooth/UWB. It will also verify a variety of 5G positioning technologies in multiple scenarios, create multi-scenario integrated positioning capabilities, and provide end-to-end LBS solutions to enable the digital transformation of vertical industries.
.png){kind=icon}
.png){kind=icon}
.png){kind=icon}
.png){kind=icon}