Enhanced Fine Phase Ranging Method for Industrial 5G Positioning

Worker location information is essential for ensuring safety in industrial environments. Fifth-generation (5G) technology’s wide coverage and comprehensive factory infrastructure make it crucial for industrial positioning. As the fundamental observation, current 5G ranging primarily relies on large bandwidth configurations, imposing stringent radio-frequency requirements and high power consumption that conflicts with the extended battery life needed for industrial devices. To address this limitation, we propose a frequency-enhanced reference signal (FERS) that enables high-precision ranging under industrial hardware constraints while maintaining low power consumption and limited bandwidth requirements. Furthermore, we develop and integrate a fine phase ranging (FPR) algorithm to achieve super-resolution distance measurement. Simulation and experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach significantly enhances ranging accuracy under low-bandwidth constraints. The proposed FPR algorithm delivers superior accuracy while maintaining computational complexity that is an order of magnitude lower than state-of-the-art super-resolution ranging methods. Additionally, the approach exhibits strong robustness under low signal-to-noise ratio conditions.