An Enhanced Observed Time Difference of Arrival Based Positioning Method for 3GPP LTE System

In 3GPP (3-rd Generation Partnership Project) LTE (Long Term Evolution) system, the use of PRS (Positioning Reference Signal) for OTDOA (Observed Time Difference of Arrival) based positioning method has been agreed. However, PRSs can be overlapped at the receiver side in synchronous network because the frequency shift pattern of PRS is decided by cell ID (Identity). Moreover, in asynchronous network, the loss of orthogonality between received PRSs generates continuous interferences. Even though autonomous muting can be applied to solve the interference problems in synchronous and asynchronous networks, the muting scheme degrades the overall positioning efficiency and requires additional network complexity. Therefore, in this paper, we propose novel OTDOA based positioning methods at the receiver side to improve positioning efficiency: cancellation method of serving PRS for synchronous network, TDORS (Time Domain Orthogonal Reference Signal) generation and useful CIR (Channel Impulse Response) selection methods for asynchronous network. We verified that the proposed methods can achieve an accurate estimation and stable operation without PRS muting.