Ericsson this week launched its 5G Advanced location services offering – a new collection of location capabilities that leverage 5G Standalone core capabilities and diverse radio infrastructure to provide accurate and reliable positioning services.
[Source: Ericsson]
Ericsson has put together a suite of location capabilities that can leverage different radio infrastructure. Indoors, the company is offering sub metre accuracy supported by its Dot Radio solution. In the macro layer, outdoor active antennas with multiple arrays can provide location accuracy down to five metres, without the help of other technologies. Passive positioning, by “listening” to signalling, can provide insights for use cases such as geo-fencing and SIM density. And by integrating Real Time Kinematics, which is able to broadcast corrections to GNSS, Ericsson says accuracy can be increased down to 10cm.
Jon Illana, Head of Communications Services, UDM and Exposure, Ericsson, said that the new 5G Advanced location solution “brings it all together” to support seamless handover between these technologies, providing an integrated connectivity and positioning capability for MNO customers and developer partners.
“We’re pretty excited about this new solution. We really think that it’s a leap in location technology, fully leveraging 5G SA – that’s what is making it possible to have this type of accuracy and holistic type of value proposition.”
“RTK, for example, is available today but it is not something that mobile service providers are a part of. But with our solutions we really make the service providers a key player in the value chain as we have a much more efficient solution for the broadcasting of these corrections to cover a very large number of devices in a very efficient way in the network.”
Illana added that as well as providing communication and positioning in the same infrastructure, seamless indoor/outdoor positioning, with high reliability and accuracy, Ericsson is focussed on enabling service providers to extract value, by focussing on open network APIs, including CAMARA APIs.
He said that potential use cases include the tracking of tools and inventory in manufacturing, locating items in logistics and delivery right to the destination point, tracking machinery in agriculture and geo fencing for drone and AV management. Other uses could be in public safety, retail, and in healthcare.
We believe that the CSPs will come into play in a big way, and that they will have a much more attractive offer on top of the connectivity
APIs = a new value proposition
Andreas Hansson, Location based services SPM at Ericsson, said, “What we are trying to enable here is an attractive value proposition in order to connect new verticals.”
These are the type of customers and companies that CSPs are already speaking to but not really tapping into yet, according to Hansson, because previous technologies really didn’t give them much edge in comparison to other alternatives that were already there.
“Now is the time where those verticals are in earnest starting to talk to the CSPs and say, ‘I need to connect my business’.”
” We believe the potential is very large. So the question remains – are we going to grab it right? How do we move? How do we achieve that? “
“The first opportunity is when a service provider or another partner wants to build a 5G private network – you can automatically address the positioning challenge and leverage that.”
“But then we also have the other big go-to-market movement – the whole developer ecosystem that is opening up via CAMARA [APIs], aggregator plays and developer platforms. Several surveys have shown that location is amongst the top five sought after capabilities from the developer community.”
Hansson admits that the idea of locating assets to aid with automation, safety, productivity and throughput is not new. But he points out that available solutions such as Bluetooth and Ultra Wideband have only penetrated about 15-20% of the market, after about two decades. That’s because they act as an overlay or a separate solution to the connectivity infrastructure.
“You have one solution for locating your assets, and another one for your connectivity. The new play now with 5G is that you can get it all from one – so that’s that’s the moment. We believe that the CSPs will come into play in a big way, and that they will have a much more attractive offer on top of the connectivity.”
The 5G SA difference
For Hansson, one of the key aspects of the service is how it is enabled by the functionality of the 5G SA core, standards and Ericsson’s own service logic.
“If you look at the core, where 5G goes from NSA to SA, the Location Management Function (LMF) and the Gateway Mobile Location Center (GMLC) functions together with Access and Mobility Management Function (AMF) are based on the Service Based Architecture, which is different from the old signalling architecture of LTE. That’s what makes it happen. It’s the end-to-end implementation through using the service-based interface that that is the difference in the core network.”
Ericsson’s 5G Advanced location services uses a mix of “plain standard” solutions and its own “sauce”, Hansson said.
“Specifically, how to distribute RTK is fully standardised, but how to derive a smart way of distributing these measurements at scale, that’s not standard. That’s logic. So all of that is built into these nodes and that architecture. And for indoor and macro [positioning] here we actually have built on a standard, interoperable base plate but we are also adding extra sauce, and that is very much built into the LMF and all those 5G core Network Functions.”
