Beyond just data communications, 5G has an important role to play in improving the way we think about positioning. For a consumer, accuracy in the range of meters may be sufficient to navigate a city, but for machines navigating a factory floor, centimeter-level positioning is key. Here Kiran Mukkavilli, Qualcomm senior director of engineering, details how mmWave 5G and enhanced positioning techniques can enable new types of IoT use cases.

At MWC 2022, Qualcomm Technologies showcases new industrial precise positioning technology with two over-the-air 5G testbeds, for 3.75 GHz and unlicensed 60 GHz mmWave, featuring our latest innovations in 5G and machine learning.

Qualcomm Technologies continues its decades of pioneering cellular positioning by evolving 5G positioning to support mmWave spectrum, as well as to improve the performance for lower-complexity IoT devices.

5G mmWave not only greatly increases network capacity for users, but it also supports new services like precise cellular positioning. At MWC 2022, Qualcomm demonstrates 5G mmWave positioning in an over-the-air test and achieved impressive results.

There are many industrial applications and uses for industrial precise positioning technology, including asset tracking and automated vehicle guidance to name just a few. 5G offers a common connectivity and precise positioning solution from a single global standard that can leverage licensed, shared, and unlicensed spectrum.

The 60 GHz over-the-air testbed for mmWave precise positioning has seven 5G transmission and reception points (TRPs) in 60 GHz, and a mobile platform with a 5G test device and a positioning server. In this demonstration, the 60 GHz TRPs regularly sweep a narrow beam for broad sector coverage with high signal strength. The 5G test device similarly sweeps a narrow beam to receive positioning reference signals from different TRPs, depending on the device’s location and beam alignment. In this demo, we show how centimeter-level precise positioning is feasible in the 60GHz mmWave unlicensed frequency band for industrial IoT.

The demos highlight emerging Qualcomm technologies and their applications for industrial use.