5G could make indoor tracking really efficient

Qualcomm is demonstrating a very accurate indoor location system with 5G and artificial intelligence alone.

During the Qualcomm 5G Summit, the American giant showed off its 5G Positioning Evolution system, which uses a combination of 5G signal and artificial intelligence to locate an indoor device with an accuracy of up to 30 centimeters.

Qualcomm demonstrates highly accurate indoor positioning system

As you may know, indoor localization has been a work in progress for more than a decade, and unfortunately, there are almost no truly useful solutions available to the general public. There are several reasons for this. Most indoor positioning systems require a specific infrastructure and use non-standard wireless protocols. Line of sight between transmitter and receiver may also be lost, resulting in reduced accuracy. Finally, the signal can pass through objects such as trees that interfere with the signal.

Qualcomm’s approach consists of two stages. First of all, 5G positioning, which uses the already existing wireless infrastructure, and not installed just for location. It works with your phone (or any 5G device) which broadcasts a 5G signal to nearby 5G hotspots with a timestamp. The amount of data transferred is very small and uses almost no bandwidth. Each access point receives a signal at a different time. It then becomes possible to triangulate the position of the transmitter. It’s the same principle as GPS, but indoors. An original and practical solution.

Only thanks to 5G and a dose of artificial intelligence

As they say, this is not enough. Unfortunately, the real world is full of problematic situations with walls, corners, trees, all kinds of signal obstructions. So many points less for final accuracy. And that’s exactly what we’re looking for in internal geolocation.

This is where artificial intelligence comes into play. Qualcomm engineers have demonstrated that it is possible to train a neural network to eliminate environmental interference with a 5G signal. The training in question consists of placing QR codes that mark 100% accuracy of positions and using this “ground of truth”to train the AI. The engineers then use the approximate 5G positioning as input to the neural network and compare the results with the hard data to feed incorrect results to the AI ​​until the 5G positioning accuracy improves.

In some cases, this accuracy has dropped from 2.5 m with 5G alone to 30 cm, which is quite remarkable. Such accuracy is absolutely fantastic for general indoor positioning and can obviously be very interesting also for industry and robots in particular. More and more companies want to roll out private 5G networks for their buildings, this would be a very nice “bonus feature”.

However, while this demo is indeed impressive, we currently have no idea when we will be able to use this technology in our daily lives. The good news is that our 5G smartphones already have the necessary hardware. With the spread of 5G infrastructure, the possibility of installing such a room will increase. We have never been so close to such a simple and accurate indoor positioning system.