CNS Core: Small: Seamless Coexistence of Positioning and Communication in 5G and Beyond Wireless Systems

下一代5G及以后的无线系统正在快速发展，以使用其通信基础设施支持定位作为本地功能。尽管依赖于密集部署的基础设施（用于准确定位），但这种基于基础设施的定位方法的开销可能会给通信性能带来显著的降级，并且需要及时关注。拟议的研究探讨了一个根本不同的通信感知协作定位的范式，从而定位的负担被卸载到客户端设备在智能，通信感知和协作（对等）的方式，减少开销和提高空间重用，以保持通信性能，而不影响定位精度。拟议的研究将为未来的无线网络铺平道路，通过定位和通信的无缝共存，将其作为传感平台。它可以以多种方式影响社会，从实现有利于消费者（例如沉浸式应用）和企业的新型5G应用，到更广泛地实现对具有挑战性的公共安全和远程编排环境至关重要的基础设施轻/自由定位。它旨在通过展示协作定位的潜力并倡导将其纳入标准规范，为即将到来的和未来的IEEE和3GPP标准提供信息。这项研究旨在通过解决三个关键挑战，向这一愿景迈出重要一步：（i）描述通信和定位性能之间的权衡，并利用协作定位的范式来设计一个无缝和高效的共存框架;（ii）在实践中实现异步（WiFi）和同步（蜂窝：LTE和新无线电，NR）接入系统通过可扩展的分布式介质接入机制;以及（iii）当我们转向更具挑战性的高频毫米波时，使能和利用定位以超越共存并优化通信性能，被测量开销负担的波系统。通过设计一个分析合理的共存框架，沿着集成的（WiFi + LTE/NR）5G测试床网络部署，我们将提出一套创新的算法和协议，使我们不仅能够在通信和定位性能方面取得有效的平衡，而且还可以提高未来高频无线系统的通信性能。这样的框架将有更广泛的意义超出定位，并将适用于其他几个传感问题下备受期待的范式“联合通信和传感”在我们未来的6 G网络。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准的支持。

Next generation 5G and beyond wireless systems are rapidly evolving to support positioning as a native feature using their communication infrastructure. Notwithstanding the dependence on a densely deployed infrastructure (for accurate positioning), the overhead of such an infrastructure- based positioning approach can bring significant degradation to communication performance, and warrants timely attention. The proposed research explores a fundamentally different paradigm of communication-aware collaborative positioning, whereby the burden of positioning is offloaded to client devices in an intelligent, communication-aware and collaborative (peer-peer) manner that reduces overhead and improves spatial reuse to preserve communication performance, without compromising on positioning accuracy. The proposed research will pave the way for future wireless networks that double up as sensing platforms through a seamless coexistence of positioning and communication. It can impact society in more ways than one, ranging from enabling novel 5G applications that benefit consumers (e.g. immersive applications) and enterprises to more broadly enabling infrastructure-light/free positioning that is central to challenging public-safety and remote orchestration environments. It aims to inform upcoming and future IEEE and 3GPP standards by demonstrating the potential of collaborative positioning and advocating for its accommodation in the standard specifications. It will also impact the industry that is actively working on positioning through demonstration of its results.The proposed research aims to take an important step towards this vision by addressing three key challenges: (i) characterizing the tradeoff between communication and positioning performance, and leveraging the paradigm of collaborative positioning to design a seamless and efficient coexistence framework; (ii) realizing coexistence in practice for both asynchronous (WiFi) and synchronous (cellular: LTE and new radio, NR) access systems through scalable, distributed medium access mechanisms; and (iii) enabling and leveraging positioning to go beyond coexistence and optimize communication performance as we move to more challenging high frequency millimeter-Wave systems that are burdened by measurement overhead. Through the design of an analytically-sound coexistence framework along with an integrated (WiFi + LTE/NR) 5G testbed network deployment, we will propose a suite of innovative algorithms and protocols that allow us to not only strike an efficient balance in both communication and positioning performance, but also enhance communication performance in future high frequency wireless systems. Such a framework will have broader implications beyond positioning and will apply to several other sensing problems under the much-anticipated paradigm of “joint communication and sensing” in our future 6G networks.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.