Positioning-Enabled 5G and 6G Satellite Networks: Use Cases and Key Technologies

The integration of positioning capabilities within upcoming Fifth Generation (5G) and Sixth Generation (6G) satellite networks is envisaged as a key feature for network access and complementary navigation purposes. Nowadays, the use of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) is widely adopted as the backbone technology for absolute outdoor positioning, including the exploitation of the user equipment (UE) location for connectivity access to non-terrestrial networks (NTN). Thus, the native use of 5G and 6G satellite networks for positioning is expected to be very relevant to complement GNSS, in case of degradation or outages. This paper describes the most relevant groups of use cases with positioning needs and highlights the opportunities for 5G and 6G satellite positioning, in terms of scenarios with respect to the coverage of terrestrial networks. Then, the key enabling technologies for 5G and 6G satellite positioning are discussed, concluding on the need to prioritize the study of the signals improving the depth of coverage, the user positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) algorithm, the high-accuracy algorithms and the user antenna.