Joint Tracking of Groups of Users with Uplink Reference Signals

TL;DR

This paper proposes a method for efficiently tracking groups of moving user equipment in cellular networks by leveraging uplink reference signals, reducing resource consumption compared to traditional approaches.

Contribution

It introduces a novel joint tracking approach for groups of UEs using uplink signals, which is more resource-efficient than individual tracking methods.

Findings

Uplink reference signals enable effective group tracking.

The proposed method reduces resource consumption.

Tracking accuracy is maintained for moving groups.

Abstract

In cellular networks user equipment (UE) need to be tracked so that they can be reached by incoming data and to keep context information such as encryption keys available for UE originated transmission. Typically UEs measure reference signal transmissions that are broadcasted by the network, and report to the network based on some criterion that allows the network to know the UE location with sufficient accuracy. An alternative approach is to let the UEs send out reference signals that the network can detect to track the UE location. This reduces the need for the UEs to measure and report, while it requires some resources for uplink transmission. In this paper we propose and evaluate a solution for jointly tracking groups of UEs that are moving together. The results show that UEs can be tracked efficiently with low resource consumption.