Preconfigured Assistance Data for Reduction in Latency and Power Consumption

Position determination of a user equipment (UE) with low latency is paramount to support safety critical applications including autonomous driving, pedestrian safety and automated guided vehicles in industrial scenarios. Release 16 of the third generation partnership project (3GPP) introduced support for UE positioning using radio signals based on the new radio (NR) standard. A UE may determine its position by measuring its range and angles to base stations, for which the UE needs to receive assistance data (AD). AD contains, among others, the information about the signals emitted by the base stations and the locations of base stations. This paper analyses a latency reduction approach called preconfigured assistance data, which is now specified in Release 17 of 3GPP specifications. In this approach, a UE receives AD needed to process positioning reference signals at its current and anticipated future locations together with information on when to use the AD. Results show that this approach reduces average latency from 160ms observed with Release 16 mechanisms to 80ms. Likewise, we also show that preconfigured AD achieves a 20% reduction in power consumption compared to Release 16. Finally, we discuss possible enhancements that can be incorporated in future releases to further reduce latency and power consumption.