Benefits of Positioning-Aided Communication Technology in High-Frequency Industrial IoT

Abstract

The future of industrial applications is shaped by intelligent moving IoT devices, such as flying drones, advanced factory robots, and connected vehicles, which may operate (semi-)autonomously. In these challenging scenarios, dynamic radio connectivity at high frequencies -- augmented with timely positioning-related information -- becomes instrumental to improve communication performance and facilitate efficient computation offloading. Our work reviews the main research challenges and reveals open implementation gaps in Industrial IoT (IIoT) applications that rely on location awareness and multi-connectivity in super high and extremely high frequency bands. It further conducts a rigorous numerical investigation to confirm the potential of precise device localization in the emerging IIoT systems. We focus on positioning-aided benefits made available to multi-connectivity IIoT device operation at 28 GHz, which notably improve data transfer rates, communication latency, and extent of control overhead.