Millimeter-Scale Absolute Carrier Phase-Based Localization in Multi-Band Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a low-complexity, millimeter-accuracy 3D localization system for wireless networks that outperforms classical methods and is suitable for widespread deployment in future 6G applications.

Contribution

It presents the first one-shot carrier phase-based localization system that achieves millimeter accuracy with low complexity and bandwidth in generic wireless networks.

Findings

Over 350,000 measurements collected demonstrating high accuracy

Improvement of over one order of magnitude compared to classical techniques

Open-source FR3 front-end for experimental validation

Abstract

Localization is a key feature of future Sixth Generation (6G) net-works with foreseen accuracy requirements down to the millimeter level, to enable novel applications in the fields of telesurgery, high-precision manufacturing, and others. Currently, such accuracy requirements are only achievable with specialized or highly resource-demanding systems, rendering them impractical for more wide-spread deployment. In this paper, we present the first system that enables low-complexity and low-bandwidth absolute 3D localization with millimeter-level accuracy in generic wireless networks. It performs a carrier phase-based wireless localization refinement of an initial location estimate based on successive location-likelihood optimization across multiple bands. Unlike previous phase unwrapping methods, our solution is one-shot. We evaluate its performance collecting ~350, 000 measurements, showing an improvement of more than one order of magnitude over classical localization techniques. Finally, we will open-source the low-cost, modular FR3 front-end that we developed for the experimental campaign.