Performance Evaluation of 5G Sidelink Positioning

(Published) Abstract:
With the advent of Release 18 in the 5G standard, the direct link between the users, termed sidelink (SL), has been specified to support positioning of a target user, in addition to the uplink/downlink-based positioning. In this paper, we describe the SL positioning specifications at a high level, present relevant challenges, and evaluate the impact of various system-level parameters on the achievable positioning accuracy. In particular, we analyze the impact of the reference signal bandwidth, availability of anchor users, as well as the synchronization error among the users on the horizontal positioning accuracy. Obviously, a reduced bandwidth or number of anchors as well as synchronization errors will have a detrimental effect on the accuracy. However, our analysis reveals the necessary bandwidth, the tolerable number of anchors and synchronization error for a given positioning accuracy requirement.