skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: Map-Assisted Millimeter Wave Localization for Accurate Position Location
Accurate precise positioning at millimeter wave frequencies is possible due to the large available bandwidth that permits precise on-the-fly time of flight measurements using conventional air interface standards. In addition, narrow antenna beamwidths may be used to determine the angles of arrival and departure of the multipath components between the base station and mobile users. By combining accurate temporal and angular information of multipath components with a 3- D map of the environment (that may be built by each user or downloaded a-priori), robust localization is possible, even in non-line-of-sight environments. In this work, we develop an accurate 3-D ray tracer for an indoor office environment and demonstrate how the fusion of angle of departure and time of flight information in concert with a 3-D map of a typical large office environment provides a mean accuracy of 12.6 cm in line-of-sight and 16.3 cm in non-line-of-sight, over 100 receiver distances ranging from 1.5 m to 24.5 m using a single base station. We show how increasing the number of base stations improves the average non-line-of-sight position location accuracy to 5.5 cm at 21 locations with a maximum propagation distance of 24.5 m. Index Terms—localization; positioning; position location; navigation; mmWave; 5G; ray tracing; site-specific propagation; map-based  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1731290 1702967
PAR ID:
10205768
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
2019 IEEE Global Communications Conference
Page Range / eLocation ID:
1 to 6
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. null (Ed.)
    3GPP air interface standards support meter-level position location of a user in a cellular network. With wider bandwidths and narrow antenna beamwidths available at mmWave frequencies, cellular networks now have the potential to provide sub-meter position location for each user. In this work, we provide an overview of 3GPP position location techniques that are designed for line-of-sight propagation. We discuss additional measurements required in the 3GPP standard that enable multipath-based non-line-of-sight position location. Further, we validate the concepts in this paper by using field data to test a map-based position location algorithm in an indoor office environment which has dimensions of 35 m by 65.5 m. We demonstrate how the fusion of angle of arrival and time of flight information in concert with a 3-D map of the office provides a mean accuracy of 5.72 cm at 28 GHz and 6.29 cm at 140 GHz, over 23 receiver distances ranging from 4.2 m to 32.3 m, using a single base station in line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight. We also conduct a theoretical analysis of the typical error experienced in the map-based position location algorithm and show that the complexity of the map-based algorithm is low enough to allow real-time implementation. 
    more » « less
  2. AbstractÐFuture sub-THz cellular deployments may be utilized to complement the coverage of the global positioning system (GPS) and provide centimeter-level accuracy. In this work, we use measurement data at 142 GHz to test a map-based position location algorithm in an outdoor urban microcell (UMi) environment. We utilize an extended Kalman filter (EKF) to track the position of the user equipment (UE) along a rectangular track, with the transmitter-receiver separation distances varying from 24.3 m to 52.8 m. The position and velocity of the UE are tracked by the EKF, with measurements of the angle of arrival and time of flight information obtained along an outdoor track, to provide a mean accuracy of 24.8 cm at 142 GHz, over 34 UE locations, using a single base station in line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight. 
    more » « less
  3. Abstract: The vast amount of spectrum available for millimeter wave (mmWave) wireless communication systems will support accurate real-time positioning concurrent with communication signaling. This paper demonstrates that accurate estimates of the position of an unknown node can be determined using estimates of time of arrival (ToA), angle of arrival (AoA), as well as data fusion or machine learning. Real-world data at 28 GHz and 73 GHz is used to show that AoA-based localization techniques will need to be augmented with other positioning techniques. The fusion of AoA-based positioning with received power measurements for RXs in an office which has dimensions of 35 m by 65.5 m is shown to provide location accuracies ranging from 16 cm to 3.25 m, indicating promise for accurate positioning capabilities in future networks. Received signal strength intensity (RSSI) based positioning techniques that exploit the ordering of the received power can be used to determine rough estimates of user position. Prediction of received signal characteristics is done using 2-D ray tracing. 
    more » « less
  4. This demo presents RFind, a system that enables fine-grained RFID localization via ultra-wideband emulation. RFind operates by measuring the time-of-flight -- i.e., the time it takes the signal to travel from an antenna to an RFID tag. To do so, it emulates an ultra-wide bandwidth on today's narrowband RFIDs without requiring any hardware modification to the tags. It then uses the large emulated bandwidth to estimate the time-of-flight and localize RFIDs. In contrast to past RFID localization proposals, RFind can operate in multipath-rich environments without reference tags and without requiring tag or antenna motion. The demo will allow users to move RFID-tagged objects to any location in line-of-sight, non-line-of-sight, and multi-path rich settings and check that the system can accurately localize the objects. 
    more » « less
  5. Abstract—This letter provides a comparison of indoor radio propagation measurements and corresponding channel statistics at 28, 73, and 140 GHz, based on extensive measurements from 2014-2020 in an indoor office environment. Side-by-side comparisons of propagation characteristics (e.g., large-scale path loss and multipath time dispersion) across a wide range of frequencies from the low millimeter wave band of 28 GHz to the sub-THz band of 140 GHz illustrate the key similarities and differences in indoor wireless channels. The measurements and models show remarkably similar path loss exponents over frequencies in both line-of-sight (LOS) and non-LOS (NLOS) scenarios, when using a one meter free space reference distance, while the multipath time dispersion becomes smaller at higher frequencies. The 3GPP indoor channel model overestimates the large-scale path loss and has unrealistic large numbers of clusters and multipath components per cluster compared to the measured channel statistics in this letter. Index Terms—mmWave, THz, channel models, multipath time dispersion, 5G, 6G, large-scale path loss, 3GPP InH. 
    more » « less