Indoor Positioning With Multibeam CSI From a Single 5G Base Station

Fifth-generation (5G) networks have been deployed to serve a massive number of users. The new properties of 5G, such as large bandwidth, high data rates, and extensive coverage, provide promising possibilities for positioning and navigation. In many commercial indoor scenarios, however, only one 5G base station (called gNB) is received by the receiver. This condition constrains the application of traditional geometric positioning methods, which typically rely on observations from multiple gNBs to a certain extent. In this work, we investigate the problem of indoor positioning with a single 5G gNB. We propose to utilize the multibeam property of 5G signals in the synchronization signal block of the downlink, while the fingerprinting method is used based on the multibeam channel state information. Field tests are conducted in different indoor scenarios to verify the effectiveness of the method. The tests show that the method is able to achieve mean absolute errors of positioning within 1.55 m by taking advantage of the multibeam property of 5G signals. Accuracy is improved by more than 54.7% compared with the single beam.