In this article, the prospects and enabling technologies for high-efficiencydevice positioning and location-aware communications in emerging 5G networksare reviewed. We will first describe some key technical enablers anddemonstrate by means of realistic ray-tracing and map based evaluations thatpositioning accuracies below one meter can be achieved by properly fusingdirection and delay related measurements on the network side, even whentracking moving devices. We will then discuss the possibilities andopportunities that such high-efficiency positioning capabilities can offer, notonly for location-based services in general, but also for the radio accessnetwork itself. In particular, we will demonstrate that geometriclocation-based beamforming schemes become technically feasible, which can offersubstantially reduced reference symbol overhead compared to classical fullchannel state information (CSI)-based beamforming. At the same time,substantial power savings can be realized in future wideband 5G networks whereacquiring full CSI calls for wideband reference signals while locationestimation and tracking can, in turn, be accomplished with narrowband pilots.
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