Experimental Validation of Single BS 5G mmWave Positioning and Mapping for Intelligent Transport

Positioning with 5G signals generally requires connection to several base stations (BSs), which makes positioning more demanding in terms of infrastructure than communications. To address this issue, there have been several theoretical studies on single BS positioning, leveraging high-resolution angle and delay estimation and multipath exploitation possibilities at mmWave frequencies. This paper presents the first realistic experimental validation of such studies, involving a commercial 5G mmWave BS with a customized beam sweep procedure and a user equipment (UE) development kit mounted on a test vehicle. We present the relevant signal models, and signal processing methods, and validate these based on data collected in an outdoor science park environment. Our results indicate that positioning is possible, but the performance is limited by the knowledge of the position and orientation of the infrastructure and the multipath visibility and diversity.