5GCroCo Lunchtime Webinar 11: Precise positioning for Connected and Automated Mobility Services

Overview: Enhanced precise positioning is a key feature to enable advanced CCAM services where lane accuracy is needed to provide an accurate situational awareness to the vehicles. Although a combination of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), Inertial Navigation Systems (INS) and vehicle sensors can satisfy most of the minimum requirements of different use cases, in some locations where satellites cannot be easily tracked, like urban or rugged areas, it could lead to inaccuracies of several meters and significant latencies.

5GCroCo has analyzed three positioning solutions to enhance vehicle’s location, 5G NR side-link, 3GPP GPS Real Time Kinematic (GNSS-RTK) and Ultra-WideBand (UWB); following the terminology described in TS 38.305, these three technologies illustrate RAT-dependent, hybrid and RAT-independent approaches, respectively. This webinar introduces the main characteristics, benefits and challenges of these three technologies in CCAM scenarios, as described on Deliverable D3.2 on “Intermediate E2E, MEC & Positioning Architecture”. Moreover, it presents experimental results of the 3GPP GNSS-RTK and UWB solutions, which have been demonstrated in 5GCroCo within the context of the Anticipated Cooperative Collision Avoidance (ACCA) Use Case trials conducted on a motorway (at the border between Luxembourg and Germany) and on a urban scenario (at the 22@ district in Barcelona). The evaluation of the obtained results shows that both technologies can provide centimeter-level accurate positioning.

Speakers: Miguel Catalan-Cid; Anastasios Kakkavas;  Maciej Muehleisen;  Marisa Catalan

Miguel Catalan-Cid is a senior research engineer at i2CAT in Barcelona. He received his Ph.D. degree in telecommunications in 2016 from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). Since 2007 he has been involved in several private and public funded research projects, and he has published his research in international conferences and journals. He has extensive experience in wireless networks, the analysis and definition of communication protocols and optimisation algorithms, the utilization of simulation tools, and the programming of embedded systems and microcontrollers. Since 2016 he has been involved in different H2020 projects related to 5G and beyond 5G technologies. He leads the precise positioning task of the EU funded 5GCroCo project.

Anastasios Kakkavas received the Diploma degree in electrical and computer engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, in 2012, and the M.Sc. degree in communications engineering from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), Germany, in 2015. He is currently pursuing a doctoral degree at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, TUM. In 2015, he joined the Munich Research Center, Huawei Technologies Duesseldorf GmbH, Munich, Germany, where he has been involved in 5G and 6G research and standardization activities. His research interests include mm-Wave communications, positioning and probabilistic inference.

Maciej Muehleisen received his PhD on “Voice over LTE” from RWTH Aachen University in 2015 and worked as a group leader for vehicular communication at Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) from 2012 until 2016 focusing on highly reliable aircraft and maritime networks. He has been with Ericsson Research since 2017 and leads the architecture work package of the EU funded 5GCroCo project on 5G for CCAM in cross-border environments. where he also serves as deputy Technical Coordinator. As “Industry Verticals Coordination” in the Research Area “Networks” he is furthermore supporting the coordination of Ericsson’s efforts in external engagements with partners from different industries. His key research interest is in end-to-end design, evaluation, and approval of safety critical communication services.

Marisa Catalan received her Ph.D. degree in telecommunications in 2009 from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). She worked from 2004 to 2011 as a researcher in the Wireless Networks Group (WNG) at UPC. Currently, she leads the IoT Research Line in the Mobile and Wireless Internet (MWI) group at i2CAT and is Technical Local Manager of the TheThinx 5G Barcelona laboratory. She has wide experience in IoT wireless technologies, in embedded platforms, in localization technologies and in the deployment of prototypes and testbeds. She has been actively involved in more than 30 national and international publish-funded projects and has been principal investigator in private   and   technology   transfer   projects   for   companies   such   as   Simon, Continental or Urbiotica.