SBIR Phase I: Non-Line of Sight Geolocation Using Massive MIMO Antenna Arrays

Signal Processing Technologies, Inc., Merrimack NH

Investigators

Abstract

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project is to pinpoint a mobile device with greater accuracy to aid in emergency situations. The technology will focus on improving geolocation accuracy of mobile devices in rich scattering environments, where current technology suffers significant degradation. In some situations, the location accuracy in these degraded environments results in first responders unable to locate the emergency sufficiently fast, costing lives. The geolocation technology uses the large antenna arrays expected with the onset of 5G and leveraging the attendant rich scattering environments to enhance the location accuracy of current techniques. This level of geolocation accuracy will lead to many new commercial applications, such as augmented reality and autonomous vehicles. This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will prove the technical feasibility of the non-line of sight geolocation technology. There are multiple aspects of this project well-grounded theoretically, but requiring demonstration as well as research in algorithms to both improve the performance of the solution and decrease the necessary processing power. The first area of research is RF phenomenology of: 1) the ability to rely on far-field models; and 2) clustered multipath models. The second research area is deconstructing a multipath channel to its individual ray components accurately enough to represent the true electromagnetic reflections, then using that derived information for geolocation. The goal of this project is to advance the technology to proof-of-concept demonstration of both the RF phenomenology and the non-line of sight geolocation algorithms. This will be accomplished through algorithm development in simulation environments and further validated with over-the-air experimentation. It is expected that RF phenomenology models will be refined in this process and fed back into the simulation environment. 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.