Fraunhofer Group for Microelectronics in cooperation with the Leibniz institutes IHP and FBHWith the new 5G mobile communications standard, the high requirements of applications in the areas of industry and logistics 4.0, smart city, medicine, and health and emergency services for wireless communication and localization solutions can be better met.
Because an increasing awareness of objects about their location is a key feature of many new business models and services, positioning is considered an integral part of the system design of 5G mobile networks.
The 5G positioning architecture will integrate various sensors based on cellular signals and cellular-independent technology (e.g., inertial sensors) to enable a hybrid positioning scheme. For localization, 5G offers the best prerequisites, as it offers, among other things, a large bandwidth for better time resolution, new frequency bands in the mm-wave range, and massive MIMO for accurate angle measurement.
As a result, 5G localization will contribute to accelerating industrial and logistical processes. This will be possible by using 5G to determine the position of drones (UAVs) or automated guided vehicles (AGVs), for example, to track goods and products in intralogistics processes or to implement localization for AR applications.
However, 5G can also be used to navigate emergency services or to localize an ever-increasing number of mobile sensors (e.g., environmental sensors). In addition, autonomous driving or use in hospitals to localize medical devices or in emergency services are further areas of application for localization with 5G.
Participating FMD member institute: Fraunhofer IIS