Vehicular Positioning Using 5G and Sensor Fusion

Abstract: Recent advances in the telecommunications industry and the resulting applicationssuch as autonomous vehicles, vehicle surveillance and traffic safetyhas increased the demand for accurate and robust vehicle positioning systems.Existing Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) based positioning techniquesface significant performance loss in the tunnels and urban canyons.Recent researches have shown that radio-based positioning techniques are theoreticallypromising to make an accurate navigation system to fill the GNSSgaps. Fifth generation of mobile communication (5G) will utilize wide bandwidthstogether with beamforming enabled by antenna arrays to provide higherdata rates to mobile users. These features make 5G a favorable candidate forhigh accuracy positioning. On the other hand, sensor fusion is commonly employedto develop more robust and accurate navigation systems for vehicles. Inthis work, the range and angle measurements from 5G base stations are fusedwith the acceleration measurements by the means of the extended Kalman filterto generate position estimates for a moving car. The accuracy of this positioningsystem is studied with centimeter wave (cmWave) and millimeter wave(mmWave) 5G cellular networks which are set up by practical parameters. Towardsthat, the positioning system is tested in a simulation-based experimentwhere a car is moving on a highway and the 5G base stations are deployedalongside of it. Based on that, a detailed analysis of the Kalman filter’s rootmean squared error (RMSE) and the 5G’s different parameters and limitingfactors such as the line of sight (LOS) blockage is carried out. Our numericalresults show that vehicles connected to 5G can benefit from this system to enhancethe robustness and accuracy of their navigation system.