SBIR Phase I: Non-Line of Sight Geolocation Using Massive MIMO Antenna Arrays

这项小型企业创新研究（SBIR）项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是更准确地确定一种移动设备，以在紧急情况下提供援助。该技术将专注于提高移动设备在高散射环境中的地理定位精度，目前的技术在这些环境中存在明显的退化。在某些情况下，在这些退化的环境中的定位精度导致第一响应者无法足够快地定位紧急情况，从而造成生命损失。地理定位技术使用5G预计会出现的大型天线阵列，并利用随之而来的丰富散射环境来提高当前技术的定位精度。这种水平的地理定位精度将带来许多新的商业应用，如增强现实和自动驾驶汽车。这个小企业创新研究一期项目将证明非视线地理定位技术的技术可行性。该项目有多个方面的理论基础，但需要演示和算法研究，以提高解决方案的性能并降低必要的处理能力。第一个研究领域是射频现象学：1)依赖远场模型的能力；2)聚类多路径模型。第二个研究领域是将多径信道分解为其单独的射线分量，精确到足以代表真正的电磁反射，然后使用该衍生信息进行地理定位。该项目的目标是将该技术推进到射频现象学和非视线地理定位算法的概念验证演示。这将通过仿真环境中的算法开发来完成，并通过空中实验进一步验证。期望射频现象学模型在此过程中得到完善，并反馈到仿真环境中。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project is to pinpoint a mobile device with greater accuracy to aid in emergency situations. The technology will focus on improving geolocation accuracy of mobile devices in rich scattering environments, where current technology suffers significant degradation. In some situations, the location accuracy in these degraded environments results in first responders unable to locate the emergency sufficiently fast, costing lives. The geolocation technology uses the large antenna arrays expected with the onset of 5G and leveraging the attendant rich scattering environments to enhance the location accuracy of current techniques. This level of geolocation accuracy will lead to many new commercial applications, such as augmented reality and autonomous vehicles.This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will prove the technical feasibility of the non-line of sight geolocation technology. There are multiple aspects of this project well-grounded theoretically, but requiring demonstration as well as research in algorithms to both improve the performance of the solution and decrease the necessary processing power. The first area of research is RF phenomenology of: 1) the ability to rely on far-field models; and 2) clustered multipath models. The second research area is deconstructing a multipath channel to its individual ray components accurately enough to represent the true electromagnetic reflections, then using that derived information for geolocation. The goal of this project is to advance the technology to proof-of-concept demonstration of both the RF phenomenology and the non-line of sight geolocation algorithms. This will be accomplished through algorithm development in simulation environments and further validated with over-the-air experimentation. It is expected that RF phenomenology models will be refined in this process and fed back into the simulation environment.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.