Today, in the era of the Internet of Everything, there is a need for more interconnections between things, things and people, and people. In such a complex and ever-changing environment, positioning technology faces more challenges and demands, requiring continuous innovation and improvement. Only in this way can we meet the high-precision positioning and navigation requirements in the fields of future intelligent transportation, driverless driving, and industrial Internet, and achieve the goal of ubiquitous positioning and navigation in all space and time, all time domains, all airspace, high precision, and high robustness.
"In terms of national security, economic construction and smart society, high-precision indoor and outdoor positioning and navigation are needed, reaching the meter-level to sub-meter level." Academician of the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences, Director of the National Engineering Laboratory for Disaster Preparedness Technology, Beijing Deng Zhongliang, a professor at the University of Posts and Telecommunications, said.
The era of Internet of Everything
Urgent need to solve the problem of high-precision positioning
As a major pioneer and academic leader in high-precision and high-confidence positioning and navigation, Deng Zhongliang has been committed to research on wireless communication networks and positioning technology since 1996. However, Deng Zhongliang also admitted that although positioning technology has made great progress compared with before, in the current complex environment, there will still be a series of challenges encountered in the process of using positioning navigation.
Deng Zhongliang, academician of the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences, director of the National Engineering Laboratory for Disaster Recovery Technology, and professor of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications
For example, in open space, the device can receive many satellite signals, and the positioning accuracy is very high. However, when the device is in sheltered or semi-shielded spaces such as indoors, mountains, and deep valleys, satellite positioning and navigation cannot achieve accurate positioning. This brings a series of new questions to the positioning and navigation system: Can high-precision positioning be achieved anywhere like communication?
Deng Zhongliang said: “Normally, satellite positioning and navigation can achieve positioning accuracy of about meters in open spaces, but to meet lane-level positioning and navigation requirements, additional facilities need to be equipped through ground-based enhancement or satellite-based enhancement. Improve the accuracy of satellite positioning and navigation to achieve decimeter-level, sub-meter-level or even centimeter-level and millimeter-level positioning accuracy.”
However, no matter what kind of enhancement method is used, it must be enhanced under the condition that satellite positioning and navigation can position normally. If there are areas that cannot be covered by satellite signals, such as indoors and basements, enhancement cannot be performed because the enhancement system can only cover the range covered by satellite signals.
Therefore, both indoor and outdoor positioning and navigation technologies must be available to meet the precise positioning needs in different scenarios. However, the environment in shielded and semi-shielded spaces is very complex. Not only are satellite signals often unable to reach them, but they may also be blocked or interfered with. This creates a conflict between technology and demand. The current problem facing the field of positioning is how to resolve this contradiction.
“5G+Beidou deep integration
Make signal coverage more comprehensive
Since satellite positioning signal strength is relatively weak and susceptible to interference from environmental factors such as occlusion, it is difficult to perform positioning indoors, especially in shielded and semi-shielded spaces. In response to this problem, Deng Zhongliang and his team proposed the "communication and communication integration" idea of "5G+satellite".
Deng Zhongliang believes that the navigation satellite network and the wireless communication network can be combined, with the navigation satellite as the core, and then integrating all communication network resources, a "drag network" for positioning services can be formed, which no longer requires separate To build an indoor positioning network. By combining satellite positioning systems with wireless communication networks, more comprehensive and intelligent positioning and navigation services can be provided.
In fact, starting from the "11th Five-Year Plan", my country's Ministry of Science and Technology has launched the "Xihe Plan" to solve the problem of indoor positioning. For the problem that satellite signals cannot be covered in shielded and semi-shielded spaces, the communication network provides supplementary coverage, thereby achieving full time and space indoor and outdoor coverage. As the main person in charge and academic leader of the "Xihe" project indoor navigation system, Deng Zhongliang has developed hundreds of independent intellectual property rights and a series of key technologies through years of research.
Today, Deng Zhongliang, based on the overall situation of national comprehensive PNT construction, leads the team to carry out research on Beidou + 5G indoor and outdoor seamless positioning technology, breaking through the problem of fusion positioning of heterogeneous systems, achieving cross-physical layer signal fusion, and further improving the accuracy of integrated space and ground positioning. . Deng Zhongliang said: "The integration of 5G + Beidou can meet the needs of full coverage and high accuracy, empower and enhance each other."
The combination of the respective advantages of "5G + Beidou" can create new sparks. For example, in the transportation field, 5G+Beidou's seamless indoor and outdoor positioning and navigation technology solves the problem of lack of satellite signals in tunnel scenarios. In the construction of smart mines, relying on 5G networks and combining Beidou positioning technology can realize unmanned remote control of mine excavation, transportation, monitoring and other aspects.
keep trying
"Scratch your head" to find a breakthrough
According to Deng Zhongliang, my country's positioning technology is currently in a leading position. Under the leadership of Deng Zhongliang, our country has successfully developed a new signaling system that integrates high-precision positioning and communications. Relying on this technology, it not only improves indoor positioning accuracy by dozens of times, breaks through many key technical bottlenecks of indoor high-precision positioning, but also greatly saves costs.
It is understood that Deng Zhongliang and his team have made major breakthroughs in three aspects:
The first breakthrough is the research on whether a single wireless network can achieve high-precision positioning. If high-precision positioning of a single wireless network can be achieved, it is expected to solve the problem of indoor positioning. However, the frequency resources of communication networks are limited. To achieve high-precision positioning, frequency resources are needed to support measurement signals and perform high-precision signal strength measurement and phase measurement. However, the use of positioning frequency will lead to the occupation or reallocation of communication resources, affecting the communication data rate and transmission speed, which leads to a conflict between communication performance and positioning accuracy.
Faced with this challenge, Deng Zhongliang established an embedded signal-noise fusion system, breaking through an international problem that had plagued him for many years. During this process, Deng Zhongliang and his team obtained a number of international patents and received high praise from foreign countries, attracting the attention of the U.S. Department of Defense. Therefore, this technology won the National Science and Technology Progress Award.
The second breakthrough concerns the issue of high-precision positioning robustness of a single wireless network. For humans, current positioning services may meet more than 90% of needs, which will make people feel satisfied. But for machines and objects, the requirements are even higher. Because single-layer wireless networks are easily blocked, there are network blind spots, such as 2G, 3G, 4G, and blind spots between networks built by different operators (China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom). Blind spot positioning is a major problem internationally.
In order to solve this problem, Deng Zhongliang integrated multiple networks and multiple sensors integrated into the mobile phone to improve the robustness and reliability of positioning. This technology has been widely used, especially in epidemic surveillance, providing the National Emergency and Safety Center with clear personnel and vehicle location information. Foreign telecom operators also spoke highly of this technology. This technology makes up for the blind spots of traditional camera surveillance and demonstrates China's strength in the field of science and technology. And won the National Science and Technology Progress Award in 2010.
The third breakthrough is the integrated positioning solution of space and earth, which solves the problem of joint positioning of satellites and communications. In urban smart transportation, satellite signals may be blocked under complex terrain such as overpasses, making it impossible to provide high-precision positioning services. However, positioning requirements are still very urgent in some fields. For example, during the construction of subway projects, high-precision positioning cannot be obtained in the underground environment, and the accuracy requirements for the construction of airport runways are also very high. In these cases, how to achieve accurate positioning becomes key.
Deng Zhongliang improves positioning accuracy by jointly using communication base stations and satellite signals. The combination of communication base stations and satellites not only achieves higher positioning accuracy. At the same time, it also simplifies the installation and adjustment process of equipment, fills in the blind spots of positioning, and provides important guarantees for engineering safety and production safety. In 2017, this technology won a number of invention patents and the National Technology Invention Award, and is also widely used in smart ocean construction.
Providing more advanced solutions for the future
Reliable and cost-effective location services
For a long time, Deng Zhongliang has been committed to achieving higher precision, more reliable, and more widely used positioning services. In terms of the national comprehensive PNT strategic plan, Deng Zhongliang’s goal is to achieve the following three important tasks in 2035: First, promote the integration of Beidou and 5G technology, and at the same time start to develop Beidou + 6G technology so that it can play a role in a wider range of fields ; Second, continue to promote the development of global 5G high-precision positioning standards, provide global users with a unified high-precision positioning experience, and promote the development of global positioning services; third, carry out research for major production areas and national defense security.
In order to promote the commercialization of positioning technology, Deng Zhongliang's team is cooperating with large communications companies such as Huawei, Zhanrui, and ZTE to promote the application of the results. In the future, Deng Zhongliang will continue to work hard to achieve more breakthroughs and contributions in the field of high-precision, high-robustness and low-cost positioning services.
From a young talent back then to a gray-haired man today, Deng Zhongliang still sticks to the front line of scientific research. It is precisely because of scientific researchers like Deng Zhongliang who have been taking risks silently that they bring more possibilities and opportunities to our future lives. Wonderful.