New “5G + Beidou” Integrated Positioning Based on OpenRAN Architecture

BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) can provide positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) service with high-precision and wide-coverage. However, in special scenarios such as urban-canyons and indoor areas, the positioning performance will degrade caused by the limitation of signal transmission. To solve this problem, a new communication and navigation integration (CNI) technology based on Open Radio Access Network (OpenRAN) architecture is proposed. This new architecture, using a new 5G white-box basestation (WBBS), has better compatibility than the classical architecture. And an integrated positioning protocol is implemented on WBBS to meet the communication service and support the real-time broadcasting of Beidou’s auxiliary enhancement information. Furthermore, a new integrated positioning scheme of outdoor “WBBS + A-RTK” and indoor “WBBS + Beidou pseudolite basestation” are suggested to satisfy the specific scenario using cases. In the end, the test results showed that the outdoor “WBBS + A-RTK “ system can provide real-time positioning services with centimeter-level accuracy, and the indoor “WBBS + Beidou pseudolite basestation” system can provide real-time positioning services with sub-meter-level accuracy.