Technology and Standardization Gaps for High Accuracy Positioning in 5g

The next generation mobile networks (5G) is about to introduce many new functionalities that will enable a portfolio of new services and applications to the benefit of the end user. One such functionality is positioning, which is a sought-after service especially for mobile network operators as location-based services is a massive market opportunity. To reach the goal of having the infrastructure ready for positioning services by 2020, this article tries to raise the awareness of the main technology and standardization gaps. One such gap concerns accurate and precise time synchronization, as one of the best telecom-based positioning technologies requires the mobile base stations to be synchronized to nanoseconds relative to each other. On top of that, the evolution of LTE and 5G will introduce a broad portfolio of new technology trends and concepts that will have a significant impact on the overall mobile network architecture and therefore will affect the traditional positioning concepts as well. Hence, the focus of this article is further extended to new technology trends that are directly related to the positioning functionality and are planned for broad deployment in the near future, or widely recognized to be essential for 5G, such as massive MIMO (mMIMO), mmWave, and dense small cell deployment.