Performance improvement of 5G positioning utilizing multi-antenna angle measurements

Time delay-based the 5th Generation Mobile Communication Technology (5G) positioning is a main method to perform high-precision positioning in Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) denied areas. However, in practical applications, the occlusion of signals in a complex environment results in few observable base stations, which affects the reliability and accuracy of positioning. The aim of this study is to improve the performance of the 5G positioning in complex environments with an insufficient number of observable base stations. First, the Angle of Departure (AOD) capability of multi-antennas is integrated into Multi-Round-Trip-Time (Multi-RTT) positioning, establishing a novel 5G RTT/AOD positioning model. Then, the influencing factors of positioning performance, including the Dilution of Precision (DOP) and the accuracy of the AOD measurements, is analyzed. The relationship between DOP and RTT/AOD positioning accuracy is deduced. Afterwards, simulation experiments are performed on 5G positioning with the Multi-RTT and RTT/AOD methods in two scenarios with good and complex environments. The theoretical analysis and experimental results show that 5G positioning with the RTT/AOD method increases the horizontal and vertical accuracies by approximately 25 and 65%, respectively, compared with the Multi-RTT method. The positioning reliability is also greatly improved. The proposed model can well solve the inefficiency of 5G positioning with the RTT method in scenarios where the number of base stations is less than three.