Performance evaluation of LTE radio fingerprint positioning with timing advancing

This paper studies the feasibility of using Timing Advancing (TA) information together with radio fingerprints for improving position estimation of Minimization of Drive Test (MDT) trace record measurements. Performance evaluation is carried out by analyzing field measurements from commercially deployed LTE (Long Term Evolution) networks operating on 800 MHz, 1800 MHz and 2600 MHz frequency bands. Positioning performance is analyzed with grid-based fingerprints consisting of LTE radio and TA measurements. Performance results indicate that the radio frequency fingerprint containing both LTE Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP) and TA measurements provides a higher positioning accuracy than the fingerprint containing only RSRP information. Moreover, the weighting of TA measurements was studied in order to obtain the best positioning accuracy. Weight 20 was found to be optimal in the studied scenario resulting in 20% reduction in positioning error.