Opportunistic channel estimation with LTE signals of limited bandwidth for positioning applications

The positioning problem is interesting in a variety of applications, especially in indoor environments or in urban canyons, where the position information obtainable with traditional Global Navigation Satellite Systems is limited. In this paper, we deal with the problem of estimating, for the purposes of positioning, the time of arrival (TOA) and the angle of arrival (AOA) by processing LTE 3GPP signals, with particular attention to the uplink signals. The main contribution of this paper is the definition of new opportunistic methods to estimate the TOA and the AOA using the upstream demodulation reference signal (DM-RS) instead of the Sounding Reference Signal. We will show that the use of DM-RS and of estimation algorithms such as the Space-Alternating Generalized Expectation-Maximization and the Iterative Adaptive Approach for Amplitude and Phase estimation (IAA-APES) allows an efficient estimate of the parameters, in spite of the small, occupied bandwidth.