IP Library Granted Patent US 12,628,113
Granted Patent B2
US 12,628,113 · App. 18/580,036 · Granted May 12, 2026

Positioning

Inventors: Oana-Elena Barbu (Aalborg, DK); Benny Vejlgaard (Aalborg, DK); Johannes Harrebek (Aalborg, DK); Ryan Keating (Naperville, IL)
Assignee: Nokia Technologies Oy
H04W64/00G01S5/0236H04L5/005
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Quick Facts
Patent No.
US 12,628,113
App. No.
18/580,036
Granted
May 12, 2026
Kind
B2
Abstract

Certain examples of the present disclosure relate to an apparatus ( 110 ) comprising means for: receiving Ultra-Wideband, UWB, Reference Signal, RS, configuration information ( 503 ), wherein the UWB RS configuration information comprises information for configuring a transmission or a reception of a UWB RS 508 by the apparatus ( 110 ) to or from at least one node of a Radio Access Network, RAN 120 ; and based at least in part on the received UWB RS configuration information ( 503 ), causing transmission or reception of the UWB RS 508 to or from the at least one node of the RAN 120.

Claims (34)

1 . An apparatus comprising:

at least one processor; and

at least one memory including computer program instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the apparatus to perform the following operations:

receiving Ultra-Wideband (UWB) Reference Signal (RS) configuration information, wherein the UWB RS configuration information comprises information for configuring a transmission or a reception of a UWB RS by the apparatus to or from at least one node of a Radio Access Network (RAN), wherein the UWB RS configuration information is received from a Location Management Function (LMF) via a serving Next Generation Node B (gNB) while the apparatus is in a Radio Resource Control (RRC) idle state, and wherein the UWB RS configuration information specifies (i) a Gaussian monocycle pulse type, (ii) a pulse width of 1 nanosecond, (iii) a bandwidth of 499.2 megahertz centered at 6.8 gigahertz, (iv) a periodicity of 20 milliseconds, (v) a transmission time offset of four Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) symbols from a frame start, and (vi) a one-millisecond transmission window;

receiving, on paging resources offset by four slots relative to standard paging, a trigger identified as an nr-UWB-RequestLocationInformation message; and

based at least in part on the received UWB RS configuration information and responsive to the trigger, causing, using a UWB transceiver that shares a reference clock locked to New Radio (NR) and without transitioning the apparatus out of the RRC idle state, the transmission of exactly three identical UWB RS bursts within the one-millisecond window to exactly two Transmission Reception Points (TRPs) consisting of the serving gNB and one neighbor gNB, each burst conforming to the specified pulse type, width, bandwidth, center frequency, periodicity, and OFDM-symbol offset, wherein the UWB RS configuration information further indicates that the two TRPs perform Time of Arrival (TOA) and Angle of Arrival (AoA) measurements on the UWB RS and report results to the LMF.

2 . The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein each of the three Ultra-Wideband Reference Signal bursts comprises a preamble of 128 pulses followed by a 32-pulse payload encoding a fixed sequence identifier for the bursts.

3 . The apparatus of claim 2 , wherein the three identical Ultra-Wideband Reference Signal bursts are emitted with equal inter-burst spacing of approximately 333 microseconds within the one-millisecond transmission window, with a tolerance of ±5 microseconds.

4 . The apparatus of claim 3 , wherein the apparatus applies a transmit-power backoff of 10 decibels relative to a pre-configured maximum power for the Ultra-Wideband Reference Signal.

5 . The apparatus of claim 4 , wherein, prior to causing the transmission, the apparatus verifies that the shared reference clock is phase-aligned to a New Radio frame boundary within ±100 nanoseconds and defers transmission until the alignment is within said bound.

6 . The apparatus of claim 5 , wherein the computer program instructions further cause the apparatus to perform the following operation: transmitting, after the three bursts, a confirmation message to the Location Management Function via the serving Next Generation Node B that includes a local timestamp for each burst and identifiers for the serving Next Generation Node B and the neighbor Next Generation Node B.

7 . The apparatus of claim 6 , wherein each of the three UWB RS bursts comprises a time-hopping sequence of length thirty-two with a chip interval of two nanoseconds, the time-hopping code being identical across the three bursts and specified in the UWB RS configuration information.

8 . A system comprising:

an apparatus;

at least one processor; and

at least one memory including computer program instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the apparatus to perform the following operations:

receiving Ultra-Wideband (UWB) Reference Signal (RS) configuration information, wherein the UWB RS configuration information comprises information for configuring a transmission or a reception of a UWB RS by the apparatus to or from at least one node of a Radio Access Network (RAN), wherein the UWB RS configuration information is received from a Location Management Function (LMF) via a serving Next Generation Node B (gNB) while the apparatus is in a Radio Resource Control (RRC) idle state, and wherein the UWB RS configuration information specifies (i) a Gaussian monocycle pulse type, (ii) a pulse width of 1 nanosecond, (iii) a bandwidth of 499.2 megahertz centered at 6.8 gigahertz, (iv) a periodicity of 20 milliseconds, (v) a transmission time offset of four Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) symbols from a frame start, and (vi) a one-millisecond transmission window;

receiving, on paging resources offset by four slots relative to standard paging, a trigger identified as an nr-UWB-RequestLocationInformation message; and

based at least in part on the received UWB RS configuration information and responsive to the trigger, causing, without transitioning the apparatus out of the RRC idle state and using a UWB transceiver that shares a reference clock locked to New Radio (NR), the transmission of exactly three identical UWB RS bursts within the one-millisecond window to exactly two Transmission Reception Points (TRPs) consisting of the serving gNB and one neighbor gNB, each burst conforming to the specified pulse type, width, bandwidth, center frequency, periodicity, and OFDM-symbol offset, wherein the UWB RS configuration information further indicates that the two TRPs perform Time of Arrival (TOA) and Angle of Arrival (AoA) measurements on the UWB RS and report results to the LMF.

9 . The system of claim 8 , wherein each of the three Ultra-Wideband Reference Signal bursts comprises a preamble of 128 pulses followed by a 32-pulse payload encoding a fixed sequence identifier for the bursts.

10 . The system of claim 9 , wherein the three identical Ultra-Wideband Reference Signal bursts are emitted with equal inter-burst spacing of approximately 333 microseconds within the one-millisecond transmission window, with a tolerance of ±5 microseconds.

11 . The system of claim 10 , wherein the apparatus applies a transmit-power backoff of 10 decibels relative to a pre-configured maximum power for the Ultra-Wideband Reference Signal.

12 . The system of claim 11 , wherein, prior to causing the transmission, the apparatus verifies that the shared reference clock is phase-aligned to a New Radio frame boundary within ±100 nanoseconds and defers transmission until the alignment is within said bound.

13 . The system of claim 12 , wherein the computer program instructions further cause the apparatus to perform the following operation: transmitting, after the three bursts, a confirmation message to the Location Management Function via the serving Next Generation Node B that includes a local timestamp for each burst and identifiers for the serving Next Generation Node B and the neighbor Next Generation Node B.

14 . The system of claim 13 , wherein each of the three UWB RS bursts comprises a time-hopping sequence of length thirty-two with a chip interval of two nanoseconds, the time-hopping code being identical across the three bursts and specified in the UWB RS configuration information.

15 . A method performed by a user equipment (UE), the method comprising:

receiving Ultra-Wideband (UWB) Reference Signal (RS) configuration information, wherein the UWB RS configuration information comprises information for configuring a transmission or a reception of a UWB RS by the UE to or from at least one node of a Radio Access Network (RAN), wherein the UWB RS configuration information is received from a Location Management Function (LMF) via a serving Next Generation Node B (gNB) while the UE is in a Radio Resource Control (RRC) idle state, and wherein the UWB RS configuration information specifies (i) a Gaussian monocycle pulse type, (ii) a pulse width of 1 nanosecond, (iii) a bandwidth of 499.2 megahertz centered at 6.8 gigahertz, (iv) a periodicity of 20 milliseconds, (v) a transmission time offset of four Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) symbols from a frame start, and (vi) a one-millisecond transmission window;

receiving, on paging resources offset by four slots relative to standard paging, a trigger identified as an nr-UWB-RequestLocationInformation message; and

based at least in part on the received UWB RS configuration information and responsive to the trigger, causing, without transitioning the UE out of the RRC idle state and using a UWB transceiver that shares a reference clock locked to New Radio (NR), the transmission of exactly three identical UWB RS bursts within the one-millisecond window to exactly two Transmission Reception Points (TRPs) consisting of the serving gNB and one neighbor gNB, each burst conforming to the specified pulse type, width, bandwidth, center frequency, periodicity, and OFDM-symbol offset, wherein the UWB RS configuration information further indicates that the two TRPs perform Time of Arrival (TOA) and Angle of Arrival (AoA) measurements on the UWB RS and report results to the LMF.

16 . The method of claim 15 , wherein each of the three Ultra-Wideband Reference Signal bursts comprises a preamble of 128 pulses followed by a 32-pulse payload encoding a fixed sequence identifier for the bursts.

17 . The method of claim 16 , wherein the three identical Ultra-Wideband Reference Signal bursts are emitted with equal inter-burst spacing of approximately 333 microseconds within the one-millisecond transmission window, with a tolerance of ±5 microseconds.

18 . The method of claim 17 , further comprising applying a transmit-power backoff of 10 decibels relative to a pre-configured maximum power for the Ultra-Wideband Reference Signal.

19 . The method of claim 18 , wherein, prior to causing the transmission, the UE verifies that the shared reference clock is phase-aligned to a New Radio frame boundary within ±100 nanoseconds and defers transmission until the alignment is within said bound.

20 . The method of claim 19 , further comprising transmitting, after the three bursts, a confirmation message to the Location Management Function via the serving Next Generation Node B that includes a local timestamp for each burst and identifiers for the serving Next Generation Node B and the neighbor Next Generation Node B, and wherein each of the three UWB RS bursts comprises a time-hopping sequence of length thirty-two with a chip interval of two nanoseconds, the time-hopping code being identical across the three bursts and specified in the UWB RS configuration information.

Assignments (4)
ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST Recorded Feb 21, 2024
From: BARBU, OANA-ELENA; VEJLGAARD, BENNY; HARREBEK, JOHANNES
To: NOKIA DENMARK A/S
Reel/Frame 066521/0679 →
ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST Recorded Feb 21, 2024
From: NOKIA DENMARK A/S
To: NOKIA TECHNOLOGIES OY
Reel/Frame 066521/0701 →
ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST Recorded Feb 21, 2024
From: KEATING, RYAN
To: NOKIA OF AMERICA CORPORATION
Reel/Frame 066521/0698 →
ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST Recorded Feb 21, 2024
From: NOKIA OF AMERICA CORPORATION
To: NOKIA TECHNOLOGIES OY
Reel/Frame 066521/0717 →
Continuity (1)
Related Publication 20240323897A1 · Sep 26, 2024
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