The main achievements of the project are:
• Complete definition of scenarios and use cases, which are representative of trends and market drivers, the operators’ perspective and indicative vertical application needs
• Finalisation of the LOCUS Architecture, which is mapped to existing standards and enables the on-demand Analytics as a Service (aaS) system.
• Investigation of vulnerabilities in 5G authentication protocols and study of various privacy attack classes; exploration of adaptive (deception/masking) attack detection strategies and detection of location security attacks on non-3GPP systems;
• Development of innovative signal processing techniques for enhanced 5G localization; Derivation of final results in 3GPP compliant simulations for several use cases with multiple localization techniques.
• Development of methods to improve each single technology through geometric and machine learning algorithms, and to fuse diverse RAT-independent technologies with cellular measurements for positioning, advancing the state of the art in each field of investigation, targeting specifically: (i) Wi-Fi at sub-6 GHz, (ii) Wi-Fi at mmWave, (iii) NR and UWB, LTE, (iv) Wi-Fi and UWB, (v) NR and GNSS, (vi) NR, Wi-Fi and UWB.
• Derivation of fundamental performance limits for Device Free Localization (DFL); Experiment with real outdoor channel measurements at 28 GHz using the 5G VINNI testbed at Samsung UK together with indoor UWB and mmWave MIMO radars
• Definition of location-enabled network management functionalities grouped under four main use cases: (i) “Knowledge Building for Network Management”; (ii) “Location-aware Network Planner”; (iii) “Location aware Network Optimization”; (iv) “Location-aware Network Diagnosis/Troubleshooting in 5G”. Deployment of the virtualization platform in the LOCUS testbed; Consolidation of the LOCUS MANO towards the final prototype
• Research and development of new services and related functionalities, which were successfully integrated into relevant proofs-of-concept;
• A COVID-19 focus group involving many partners has been formed to develop efficient tools for flow monitoring and controlling the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
• A LOCUS Platform prototype setup in the OTE testbed and the successful realization of 3 proof-of-concepts;
• A number of 76 peer-reviewed works, among joint and individual, have been already published, mainly in top-tier journal.
• LOCUS project will publish a peer-reviewed Wiley-IEEE book together with other experts on localization and positioning. The book is expected to be published in 2023.
• The standardization work has led to a total of 32 standardization contributions and 5 open-source contributions.
