Enhancing Fingerprinting-Based 5G Positioning Accuracy with Directionally Transmitted Synchronization Signals

In this paper, directionally transmitted, 5G NR synchronization signal for radio frequency pattern matching based positioning is demonstrated. To build necessary reference fingerprint database almost 20,000 measurements were collected over the 10 km² area. Both database-based and weighted k-nearest neighbours’ algorithms were tested and evaluated. Results show that the average positioning accuracy can be up to 26 m over 4 km long test trajectory. Moreover, half of the positioning errors were smaller than 16.4 m. Results could be useful for tracking the movement of cargo and vehicles along roads, highways, and railroads without the need for satellite navigation receiver.