Inferring Direction and Orientation from Polarized Signals: Feasibility and Bounds
Journal article, 2024

Polarization is a fundamental property of electromagnetic radio signals but often neglected in localization studies. In this paper, we study the potential benefits of integrating the polarization dimension into localization applications. We develop a three-dimensional (3D) geometric channel model between a base station (BS) and user equipment (UE), both equipped with dual-polarized (DP) antennas, which offers fundamental insights into the angles of departure (AoD) from the BS to the UE as well as the 3D orientation of the UE. From the model, we identify the degrees of freedom (DoF) provided by the polarization dimension for localization solutions by evaluating the rank of the equivalent Fisher information matrix. Subsequently, we leverage these DoF to introduce three distinct localization applications: (i) 3D orientation estimation, (ii) 2D AoD estimation, and (iii) mixed 2D position and 1D orientation estimation for vehicular scenarios. Furthermore, for the three localization applications we identify their regions of operation in terms of the ranges of the angles of interest, to avoid any ambiguity occurrence through the estimation process, thereby guaranteeing unique solutions. Finally, we derive the Cramér-Rao lower bounds and numerically establish the efficiency of the proposed estimators.

3D Orientation Estimation

Localization

Polarization

Author

Emad Ibrahim

Luleå University of Technology

Hui Chen

Chalmers, Electrical Engineering, Communication, Antennas and Optical Networks

Zi Ye

Luleå University of Technology

Reza Ghazalian

Nokia

Hyowon Kim

Chungnam National University

Rickard Nilsson

Luleå University of Technology

Henk Wymeersch

Chalmers, Electrical Engineering, Communication, Antennas and Optical Networks

Jaap Van De Beek

Luleå University of Technology

IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society

2644125X (eISSN)

Vol. 5 6033-6047

Subject Categories

Signal Processing

DOI

10.1109/OJCOMS.2024.3462689

More information

Latest update

10/28/2024