Beyond 5G Localization via Sidelinks in Industrial IoT Scenarios

Location awareness is a fundamental enabler for several emerging fifth generation (5G) and beyond wireless applications. In particular, since Release 18 the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is putting an effort on the stan-dardization of sidelink (SL) localization. This can be particularly important both to enhance the localization capabilities of the 5G network and to provide location awareness in partial-coverage conditions. However, SL localization poses additional challenges with respect to conventional downlink and uplink localization, such as the uncertainty in the position of the SL nodes. This paper proposes two algorithms based on soft information (SI) for SL localization in 5G and beyond wireless networks. Results for 3GPP settings in an indoor factory scenario demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approaches to improve the localization accuracy in full-coverage conditions, as well as to provide location awareness in partial-coverage conditions.