China Mobile Guangdong, Shenzhen Metro Group, and Huawei Verify 1 m-Precision 5G Indoor Positioning

China Mobile Guangdong, Shenzhen Metro Group, and Huawei verified 5G indoor positioning of 1 m precision at the Joint Innovation Lab. The verification was conducted based on Huawei's 5G Digital Indoor System (DIS) at Bao'an Passenger Transport Terminal Station of Metro Line 12 in the mega city Shenzhen. The result showed a precision of 1 m@90%, meaning that high-precision positioning of assets in metro stations and special rail transit terminals will be readily available.

Rapidly developing industry capabilities such as 5G positioning and 5G LAN will allow multiple mobile broadband services over just a single 5G private network. This is crucial to fulfill the mobile service needs in stations with high passenger density, while facilitating digital twin services for metro line operations, as well as the application of CIM-based scenario convergence, underground infrastructure survey, and building information model (BIM) technology in O&M. This will maximize the value of 5G private networks to take Shenzhen to a new height in digitalization and smartness.

Figure 1: Onsite 5G positioning test

High adaptability and ease in deployment accelerate commercial positioning.

This verification used Huawei's 5G indoor positioning solution, which consists of LampSite Enterprise Edition (EE) and location service (LCS) modules based on on-premises 5G core networks. Based on this solution, third-party positioning platforms and applications can interconnect with the core-network LCS standard open interfaces to provide positioning services for enterprises. Two major challenges in the commercial development of 5G positioning are manual fingerprint collection and beacon deployment. To address these issues, Huawei uses the innovative technologies — Radio Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (Radio SLAM) and an AI-based big data clustering latency correction algorithm — to automate fingerprint database generation and beacon-free latency correction based on uplink time difference of arrival (U-TDOA).

5G positioning is a consistent part of 3GPP specifications.

When the positioning capability was first included in 3GPP Release 16 in 2020 as a 5G network standard, the precision was just 3 m@80%, which was then increased to 1 m@90% in Release 17 in 2022. To date, 5G indoor positioning has been verified across several sectors spanning manufacturing, warehousing, and transportation, with a precision of 1 m@90%. This precision fulfills most industry needs for personnel, equipment, and material positioning. With 3GPP Release 18, the precision will be further improved to sub-meter to better empower industry applications.

As 5G positioning reaches new heights, China Mobile Guangdong will continue to diversify 5G indoor positioning services in industries including transportation, industrial manufacturing, and healthcare, to further grow the 5GtoB market.

This content is sponsored by Huawei.