5G new radio (NR) provides new opportunities for accurate positioning from a single reference station: large bandwidth combined with multiple antennas, at both the base station and user sides, allows for unparalleled angle and delay resolution. Nevertheless, positioning quality is affected by multipath and clock biases. We study, in terms of performance bounds and algorithms, the ability to localize a vehicle in the presence of multipath and unknown user clock bias. We find that when a sufficient number of paths is present, a vehicle can still be localized thanks to redundancy in the geometric constraints. Moreover, the 5G NR signals enable a vehicle to build up a map of the environment.

We introduce a distributed, cooperative framework and method for Bayesian estimation and control in decentralized agent networks. Our framework combines joint estimation of time-varying global and local states with information-seeking control optimizing the behavior of the agents. It is suited to nonlinear and non-Gaussian problems and, in particular, to location-aware networks. For cooperative estimation, a combination of belief propagation message passing and consensus is used. For cooperative control, the negative posterior joint entropy of all states is maximized via a gradient ascent. The estimation layer provides the control layer with probabilistic information in the form of sample representations of probability distributions. Simulation results demonstrate intelligent behavior of the agents and excellent estimation performance for a simultaneous selflocalization and target tracking problem. In a cooperative localization scenario with only one anchor, mobile agents can localize themselves after a short time with an accuracy that is higher than the accuracy of the performed distance measurements.

In a typical multitarget tracking (MTT) scenario, the sensor state is either assumed known, or tracking is performed in the sensor's (relative) coordinate frame. This assumption does not hold when the sensor, e.g., an automotive radar, is mounted on a vehicle, and the target state should be represented in a global (absolute) coordinate frame. Then it is important to consider the uncertain location of the vehicle on which the sensor is mounted for MTT. In this paper, we present a multisensor low complexity Poisson multi-Bernoulli MTT filter, which jointly tracks the uncertain vehicle state and target states. Measurements collected by different sensors mounted on multiple vehicles with varying location uncertainty are incorporated sequentially based on the arrival of new sensor measurements. In doing so, targets observed from a sensor mounted on a well-localized vehicle reduce the state uncertainty of other poorly localized vehicles, provided that a common non-empty subset of targets is observed. A low complexity filter is obtained by approximations of the joint sensor-feature state density minimizing the Kullback-Leibler divergence (KLD). Results from synthetic as well as experimental measurement data, collected in a vehicle driving scenario, demonstrate the performance benefits of joint vehicletarget state tracking.

While cooperation among vehicles can improve localization, standard communication technologies (e.g., 802.11p) cannot provide reliable range or angle measurements. To allow cooperation without explicit inter-vehicle measurements, we propose a cooperative localization method whereby vehicles track mobile features in the environment and use associations of features among vehicles to improve the vehicles' localization accuracy. The proposed algorithm, which scales linearly in the number of vehicles and quadratically in the number of tracked features, shows superior localization performance compared to a non-cooperative approach. Legend Cooperative vehicle Mobile feature RSU Communication link