5G-enhanced Positioning Accuracy in Smart City

Abstract

The new 5G mobile network promises to enhance existing services or include new ones to address key challenges presented by smart city stakeholders (citizens, municipalities, politics, industries, architects, etc.) to improve system implementations. These challenges cover various smart city fields such as transportation, environmental monitoring, healthcare, industrial automation, smart grid, etc. Thus, the main objective of 5G functionalities is to provide solutions to the various identified needs, which are defined as constraints and requirements. Therefore, three categories of 5G-based use cases have been defined: Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), Massive Machine Type Communications (mMTC), and Ultra-reliable and Low Latency Communications (uRLLC). Each group involves a set of use cases and characterized by specific technical features that address the corresponding needs. However, accurate and real-time positioning information is a vital requirement common to all three categories, but the degree of performance varies across scenarios and descriptions. Therefore, this work presents a summary of existing positioning technologies crossed with wireless technologies and smart city use cases to highlight the potential that will add accurate and real-time positioning to 5G capabilities. 5G promises decimeter accuracy in some critical use cases.