Increasing positioning measurement accuracy with carrier aggregation

Abstract

Example embodiments of the present disclosure relate to a device, method, apparatus and computer readable medium for improving positioning measurement accuracy with carrier aggregation. A first device in a communication network may be configured to receive a first positioning reference signal on a first component carrier and a second positioning reference signal on a second component carrier from a second device in the communication network, and jointly process the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal, in response to an oversampling indication indicating that oversampling is applied to the positioning reference signal, a positioning measurement is generated.

Description

Technical Field

[0001] The various example embodiments described herein generally relate to communication technologies, and more particularly, to devices, methods, apparatuses, and computer-readable media for improving positioning measurement accuracy using carrier aggregation. Background Art

[0002] Certain abbreviations that can be found in this specification and / or the drawings are defined herein as follows:

[0003] CA Carrier Aggregation

[0004] CC Component Carrier

[0005] gNB Next Generation Node B

[0006] IFFT Inverse Fast Fourier Transform

[0007] LMC Location Management Component

[0008] LMF Location Management Function

[0009] LTE Long Term Evolution

[0010] LPP LTE Positioning Protocol

[0011] Multi-RTT Multi-Cell Round Trip Time

[0012] NR New Radio

[0013] NRPPa NR Positioning Protocol A

[0014] OFDM Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing

[0015] PRS Positioning Reference Signal

[0016] RRC Radio Resource Control

[0017] SRS Sounding Reference Signal

[0018] TRP Transmission and Reception Point

[0019] UE User Equipment

[0020] Positioning methods based on terrestrial networks can be generally classified into timing-based methods, angle-based methods, and hybrid methods based on timing and angle. Timing-based methods rely on the propagation delay of radio frequency (RF) carriers to estimate the distances between a user equipment (UE) and multiple base stations or transmission and reception points (TRPs), and use the principle of triangulation to determine the position of the UE. Similarly, the principle of triangulation also applies to angle-based methods, which use the knowledge of transmitted signal beamforming and / or the phase difference between receiving antenna elements to determine the azimuth and zenith angles between a transmitter and a pair of receivers. Summary of the Invention

[0021] A brief overview of exemplary embodiments is provided below to provide a basic understanding of certain aspects of the various embodiments. It should be noted that this Summary of the Invention is not intended to identify key features of the basic elements or to define the scope of the embodiments. Its sole purpose is to introduce some concepts in a simplified form as a prelude to the more detailed description below.

[0022] In a first aspect, an exemplary embodiment of a first device in a communication network is provided. The first device may include at least one processor and at least one memory storing instructions. When the instructions are executed by the at least one processor, the first device may at least receive a first positioning reference signal on a first component carrier and a second positioning reference signal on a second component carrier from a second device in the communication network, and jointly process the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal to generate a positioning measurement result in response to an oversampling indication indicating that oversampling has been applied to the positioning reference signal.

[0023] In a second aspect, an exemplary embodiment of a second device in a communication network is provided. The second device may include at least one processor and at least one memory storing instructions. When the instructions are executed by the at least one processor, the second device may at least oversample a first positioning reference signal and a second positioning reference signal in response to an oversampling indication indicating that oversampling is to be performed on the positioning reference signal, and transmit the first positioning reference signal to the second device in the communication network on the first component carrier and transmit the second positioning reference signal to the second device on the second component carrier.

[0024] In a third aspect, an exemplary embodiment of a location server in a communication network is provided. The location server may include at least one processor and at least one memory storing instructions. When the instructions are executed by the at least one processor, the location server may at least send an oversampling indication indicating that oversampling is to be applied to the positioning reference signal to at least one of the network devices or terminal devices in the communication network.

[0025] In addition, exemplary embodiments of methods, apparatuses, and computer-readable media are also provided. These exemplary embodiments basically correspond to the exemplary embodiments of the above aspects, and for convenience, the repeated description thereof is omitted here.

[0026] When read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, other features and advantages of the exemplary embodiments of the present disclosure will also become apparent from the following description of the specific embodiments, which illustrate the principles of the exemplary embodiments of the present disclosure by way of example. Brief Description of the Drawings

[0027] Some exemplary embodiments will now be described with reference to the accompanying drawings by way of non - limiting examples:

[0028] Figure 1 is a schematic diagram showing an exemplary wireless communication network in which exemplary embodiments of the present disclosure may be implemented;

[0029] Figure 2A and 2B is a block diagram showing transmission structure options for carrier aggregation;

[0030] Figure 3 is a message flow diagram showing a positioning process according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure;

[0031] Figure 4 is a schematic diagram showing oversampling of a positioning reference signal according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure;

[0032] Figure 5 is a flowchart showing a method for jointly processing a positioning reference signal according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure;

[0033] Figure 6 is a schematic diagram showing a frequency shift process according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure;

[0034] Figure 7 is a flowchart showing a method for phase offset compensation according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure;

[0035] Figure 8 is a flowchart showing a method for carrier phase estimation according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure;

[0036] Figure 9 is a flowchart showing a method for carrier phase estimation according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure;

[0037] Figure 10 is a flowchart showing a method for determining a phase compensation factor according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure;

[0038] Figure 11 is a message flow diagram of a positioning process showing according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure;

[0039] Figure 12 is a schematic block diagram showing a device according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure;

[0040] Figure 13 is a schematic block diagram showing a device according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure;

[0041] Figure 14is a schematic block diagram showing a device according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure; and

[0042] Figure 15 is a schematic block diagram showing a communication system according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure.

[0043] Throughout the drawings, the same or similar reference numerals denote the same or similar elements. Repetitive descriptions of the same elements will be omitted. Detailed Description of Specific Embodiments

[0044] Hereinafter, some exemplary embodiments will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. The following description includes specific details for the purpose of providing a thorough understanding of various concepts. However, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art that these concepts may be implemented without these specific details. In some cases, well-known circuits, techniques, and elements are shown in block diagram form to avoid obscuring the described concepts and features.

[0045] The term "terminal device" as used herein may refer to any entity or device capable of wireless communication with a network device or with each other. Examples of terminal devices may include mobile phones, mobile terminals (MTs), mobile stations (MSs), subscriber stations (SSs), portable subscriber stations (PSSs), access terminals (ATs), computers, wearable devices, vehicle-mounted communication devices, machine type communication (MTC) devices, D2D communication devices, V2X communication devices, sensors, etc. The term "terminal device" may be used interchangeably with user equipment (UE), user terminal, mobile terminal, mobile station, or wireless device.

[0046] The term "network device" as used herein may refer to any suitable entity or device capable of providing a cell or coverage area through which a terminal device can access the network or receive services. Network devices are generally referred to as base stations. The term "base station" as used herein may represent Node B (NodeB or NB), evolved Node B (eNodeB or eNB), or gNB. A base station may be embodied as a macro base station, a relay node, or a low-power node, such as a pico base station or a femto base station. A base station may consist of multiple distributed network units, such as a central unit (CU), one or more distributed units (DUs), one or more remote radio heads (RRHs), or remote radio units (RRUs). The number and functions of these distributed units depend on the selected split RAN architecture.

[0047] Figure 1 An exemplary communication network 100 is shown in which the exemplary embodiments of the present disclosure may be implemented. As Figure 1As shown, the communication network 100 may include multiple base stations (BSs) 120 (illustrated by three base stations 120a, 120b, and 120c), which may form a so-called radio access network (RAN) and provide network access to multiple user equipments (UEs) 110. Figure 1 A UE 110 is shown, which may be connected to any one of the multiple base stations 120. In one example, the UE 110 may camp in a cell supported by the base station 120a and establish a radio resource control (RRC) connection with the base station 120a. The base station 120a may be referred to as the serving base station of the UE 110, and the base stations 120b and 120c may be referred to as neighbor base stations.

[0048] In some exemplary embodiments, the communication network 100 may adopt a multi-transmission reception point (mTRP) architecture, where the UE 110 may send data to and receive data from one or more transmission reception points (TRPs). The TRP may be associated with one or more base stations 120 and / or one or more cells. The exemplary embodiments described herein are not limited to any particular deployment of the TRP or the specific relationship between the TRP and the base station / cell. It can be understood that throughout the content of this disclosure, the term "base station" may also include the TRP, and the operations performed at the base station may be at least partially performed at the TRP.

[0049] The communication network 100 may further include a location server 130 for managing the positioning of UEs connected to the network 100. The location server 130 may be a physical or logical entity and may be implemented as a local location management component (LMC) in the RAN or a location management function (LMF) in the core network. As described above, a timing-based positioning method, an angle-based positioning method, or a hybrid positioning method based on timing and angle may be performed in the communication network 100 to estimate the location of the UE 110. In these positioning methods, the UE 110 may send a positioning reference signal (PRS) to the base station 120 in the uplink (UL), and / or receive a positioning reference signal sent from the base station 120 in the downlink (DL). The base station 120 and the UE 110 may measure the UL PRS and the DL PRS respectively to estimate the time of arrival or angle of arrival (TOA or AOA) of the received PRS, and send a positioning measurement report including the TOA or AOA estimate to the location server 130. The location server 130 may estimate the location of the UE 110 based on the received positioning measurement report.

[0050] An ongoing goal of positioning methods is to improve positioning measurement accuracy. Rel.18 approved a research project on positioning with the goal of improving positioning accuracy based on carrier aggregation (CA) (also known as bandwidth aggregation). In 5G New Radio (NR), CA can support up to 16 contiguous or non-contiguous component carriers (CCs) and aggregate 5G bands with up to approximately 1 GHz of spectrum. CA is typically used for data transmission and not for the transmission of reference signals such as PRS. In CA-based data transmission, data symbols are independently scheduled / processed in each CC, and the overall throughput is increased by aggregating each CC. However, in the transmission of CA-based reference signals (e.g., PRS), simply increasing the length of PRS symbols by independently scheduling and processing PRS symbols in each CC (as in CA-based data transmission) is not sufficient because this strategy cannot utilize the overall sequence length gain. If each CC is independently processed in the case of PRS, the gain will come from the average value rather than the increase in bandwidth. In addition, the diversity gain brought by multiple CCs may be negligible, especially when the frequency interval between two CCs is large. Therefore, in order to improve the accuracy of positioning measurements, joint processing of PRS sequences scheduled in different CCs is required. The LMF can configure two or more PRS resources across different CCs.

[0051] The joint processing of PRS sequences received on different CCs depends on the transmit (Tx) and receive (Rx) architectures used for CA, as well as the error and noise sources they have. Figure 2A and 2B FIG. shows two Tx architecture options for CA in an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system, and it is conceivable that there are similar architecture options on the receiver side. First, refer to Figure 2A, the Tx architecture 200A may include two separate RF chains 210a, 210b to support two consecutive or non - consecutive CCs. The first RF chain 210a may include a first baseband (BB) 211a, a first inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT) block 213a, a first digital - to - analog converter (DAC) 215a, a first mixer 217a, a first local oscillator 219a, a first RF power amplifier (PA) 221a, a first RF filter 223a, and a first antenna 229a. The first baseband 211a may provide a baseband signal, which is a low - pass signal generated from an information source. The first IFFT block 213a may perform an IFFT transform on the baseband signal to convert it from the frequency domain to the time domain, and the first DAC 215a may convert the baseband signal from the digital domain to the analog domain. The first mixer 217a (also known as a modulator) may modulate a carrier provided from the local oscillator 219a using the analog baseband signal and provide the modulated signal to the first RF power amplifier 221a, where the modulated signal may be amplified. The RF filter 223a may remove out - of - band components of the amplified modulated signal and generate a pass - band signal, the spectrum of which is concentrated around the carrier frequency. Then, the pass - band signal is transmitted through the first antenna 219a. Similar to the first RF chain 210a, the second RF chain 210b may include a second baseband 211b, a second IFFT block 213b, a second DAC 215b, a second mixer 217b, a second local oscillator 219b, a second RF PA 221b, a second RF filter 223b, and a second antenna 229b, which process the second baseband signal provided from the second baseband 211b in a similar manner as the first RF chain 210a.

[0052] See Figure 2B , in the Tx architecture 200B, the output of the first RF filter 223a in the first RF chain 210a and the output of the second RF filter 223b in the second RF chain 210b may be combined in an RF combiner 225 and filtered in a combining filter 227. Then, the combined signal may be transmitted through the shared antenna 219. Other aspects of the transmitter architecture 200B may be similar to those of the transmitter architecture 200A and will not be described again here. It can be understood that other Tx / Rx architectures for CA are also possible, where the RF chains for each CC include one or more different hardware components.

[0053] The requirements or use of different hardware components in RF chains supporting different component carriers can bring various problems, such as timing errors, phase consistency, frequency errors, etc. When jointly processing positioning reference signals (PRSs) transmitted in different CCs, the inter-CC timing / phase offset can cause inter-CC symbol interference. If the inter-CC timing / phase offset is not compensated or mitigated, then simply jointly processing the PRS sequences scheduled in different CCs will result in poor / inaccurate positioning delay estimation due to inter-CC symbol interference. In other words, if the inter-CC timing / phase offset is not processed and the PRSs scheduled / configured in different CCs are not jointly processed, then simply increasing the PRS transmission bandwidth using multiple CCs is not sufficient to improve the accuracy of positioning measurements.

[0054] According to various aspects of the present disclosure, a process for improving the accuracy of positioning measurements by jointly processing PRS sequences scheduled in different CCs is provided. On the transmitter side, considering the bandwidth of the aggregated CCs, the PRS sequences can be oversampled in the time domain before being transmitted via multiple CCs. On the receiver side, oversampling is also performed according to the indication of the transmitter or the location server, and then the inter-CC timing / phase offset can be corrected / compensated, and the PRS sequences transmitted via different CCs are jointly processed to generate a single positioning measurement result. During the process of jointly processing the PRS sequences, inter-CC symbol interference can be eliminated / mitigated, and the accuracy of positioning measurements can be improved. This process can achieve a real performance gain through carrier aggregation.

[0055] For PRS transmission, a frequency-flat channel with a dominant line-of-sight (LOS) path can be considered. Based on this assumption, the original channel H can be estimated by multiplying the received signal in the l-th subcarrier by the conjugate of the PRS symbol scheduled in the l-th subcarrier. l Channel H l The channel frequency response (CFR) of can be approximately calculated as follows:

[0056]

[0057] In the above equation (1), a1 is the path gain, and τ1 is the propagation delay of the dominant LOS path (i.e., the first-arrival path). The symbol Δ is used to represent the normalized quantization error of the propagation delay τ1, which is normalized to the sampling period T depending on the transmission bandwidth. s The function sinc() is used as a scaling factor depending on the pulse shape, and for the sake of approximation, an ideal pulse shape can be assumed. As shown in equation (1), the carrier phase “2πf c τ1” is independent of the CC bandwidth, while the actual delay “τ1 ± ΔT s ” is quantized depending on the CC bandwidth.

[0058] To estimate the propagation delay, an IFFT operation can be performed on the channel frequency response. Assume that two CCs each having a bandwidth of N (where N is the number of subcarriers) are aggregated together, and there is no timing / phase offset between these two CCs. Then, the IFFT-processed channel frequency response (CFR) can be expressed as follows:

[0059]

[0060] where n is the number of sampling points, is the sampling period (or resolution) obtained by jointly processing (i.e., IFFT processing) the two CCs, M is the IFFT size, which can be set to be greater than or at least equal to the bandwidth 2N of the aggregated CCs (i.e., M ≥ 2N). For simplicity of discussion, assume that the two CCs have the same bandwidth N. The exemplary embodiments described below also apply to CCs with unequal bandwidths.

[0061] In the above formula (2), the term "τ1 ± ΔT s " depends on the CC bandwidth N, while the term depends on the bandwidth 2N of the aggregated CCs. Equation (2) indicates that if the transmitter / receiver does not take into account the bandwidth of the aggregated CCs when transmitting / receiving the PRS sequences in their respective CCs, then simply jointly processing the two CCs (which improves the resolution ) is not sufficient to improve the accuracy of delay measurement. The resolution T s of each CC also needs to be improved. Therefore, oversampling of the PRS sequences transmitted / received in each CC is required.

[0062] Figure 3 is a message flow diagram showing the positioning process 300 according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure. As Figure 3 shown, the steps in the positioning process 300 can be executed on the first device 301, the second device 303, and the location server (LS) 305. The first device 301 can be implemented as a terminal device such as the UE 110 as Figure 1 shown, and the second device 303 can be implemented as a network device such as any one of the base stations 120 as Figure 1 shown. In another exemplary embodiment, the first device 301 can be implemented as a network device such as any one of the base stations 120 as Figure 1 shown, while the second device 303 can be implemented as a terminal device such as the UE 110 as Figure 1 shown. The location server 305 can be implemented as the location server 130 as Figure 1 shown. As described above, the location server 305 can be implemented as a location management function (LMF) in the core network or a location management component (LMC) in the RAN.

[0063] Reference Figure 3 Referring to Figure 3 , at 310 and 312, the location server 305 may send oversampling indications to the second device 303 and the first device 301, respectively. For example, the location server 305 may send an oversampling indication to one of the first device 301 and the second device 303 implemented as the UE 110 via an LTE positioning protocol (LPP) message, and send an oversampling indication to the other of the first device 301 and the second device 303 implemented as the base station 120 via an NR positioning protocol a (NRPPa) message. In an exemplary embodiment where the first device 301 is implemented as the UE 110 and the second device 303 is implemented as the base station 120, the second device 303 may send the oversampling indication received from the location server 305 to the first device 301 via RRC signaling at 311, and step 312 may be omitted. In an exemplary embodiment where the first device 301 is implemented as the base station 120 and the second device 303 is implemented as the UE 110, the first device 301 may transmit the oversampling indication received from the location server 305 to the second device 303 via RRC signaling at 313, and step 310 may be omitted.

[0064] The oversampling indication may indicate whether to oversample the positioning reference signal (PRS). For example, the oversampling indication may include an information element (IE) such as "PRSCCoverSample" with a value of "true" or "false" to indicate whether to apply oversampling to the DL PRS. Additionally, the oversampling indication may further include an information element (IE) such as "SRSCCoverSample" with a value of "True" or "False" to indicate whether to apply oversampling to the sounding reference signal.

[0065] In the present disclosure, the term "positioning reference signal" or "PRS" may refer to any UL or DL reference signal that can be used to perform positioning measurements, unless the context requires otherwise. Examples of UL reference signals for positioning measurements may include, but are not limited to, the sounding reference signal (SRS), the physical random access channel (PRACH), the UL demodulation reference signal (DMRS), the UL phase tracking reference signal (PTRS), and other UL reference signals defined in 3GPP specifications that can be used for UL positioning. Examples of DL reference signals for positioning measurements may include, but are not limited to, the so-called positioning reference signal defined in 3GPP specifications, the synchronization signal block (SSB), the channel state information reference signal (CSI-RS), the DL DMRS, and other DL reference signals defined in 3GPP specifications that can be used for DL positioning. In some exemplary embodiments, for ease of description, the PRS and SRS defined in 3GPP specifications are described as examples of DL PRS and UL PRS, respectively, but various aspects of the present disclosure are also applicable to other positioning reference signals.

[0066] In an exemplary embodiment, the oversampling indication may further include information on an oversampling factor for PRS oversampling. The location server 305 may determine an oversampling factor for the CC and signal the determined oversampling factor to the first device 301 and the second device 303. The oversampling factor may be at least equal to the overall aggregated CC bandwidth. In another example, the location server 305 may notify the first device 301 and the second device 303 of the aggregated CC bandwidth, from which the first device 301 and the second device 303 may derive the oversampling factors required for their respective CCs. In another example, the first device 30 and the second device 303 may know the overall aggregated CC bandwidth, and the location server 305 need not explicitly or implicitly signal the oversampling factor to the first device 301 and the second device 303.

[0067] If the second device 303 determines to apply oversampling to the PRS from the oversampling indication received at 310 at 314, the second device 303 may determine that the PRS transmitted on multiple CCs will be jointly processed at the receiver side and may perform oversampling on the PRS in the time domain at 316. In this regard, the oversampling indication may also be referred to as a receiver for performing oversampling and joint processing indication. For ease of description, an example in which two PRSs to be transmitted on two CCs is used for illustration herein. The second device 303 may oversample a first positioning reference signal PRS1 to be transmitted on a first CC (CC1) and a second positioning reference signal PRS2 to be transmitted on a second CC (CC2) based on the oversampling factor in step 316.

[0068] Figure 4 An example of an oversampling operation according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure is shown. Referring to Figure 4 , assume that a first component carrier CC1 and a second component carrier CC2 each have a bandwidth N (i.e., the number of subcarriers), and the oversampling factor N 12 is greater than or equal to the overall aggregated CC bandwidth 2N, i.e., N 12 ≥2N. The second device 303 may fill the resource elements on either side of the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 with zeros in the frequency domain until the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 each expand to be determined by the oversampling factor N 12The indicated bandwidth. Thus, the first positioning reference signal PRS1 can be processed in the first Tx chain and transmitted on the first component carrier CC1, and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 can be processed in the second Tx chain and transmitted on the second component carrier CC2. In terms of spectrum usage, zero-padding in the frequency domain has no effect because nothing is transmitted in the subcarriers appended on either side of the added zeros. However, when the extended first and second positioning reference signals PRS1 and PRS2 are subjected to IFFT processing in the Tx chain, zero-padding results in more sampling points in the time domain, which helps improve the positioning measurement accuracy at the receiver side, as described in Equation (2) above. It can be understood that zero-padding in the frequency domain is just an example for oversampling the PRS in the time domain, and other methods for oversampling are also applicable to the exemplary embodiments.

[0069] Please refer back to Figure 3 , if the PRS is not oversampled at 314, the second device 303 can determine that the PRS transmitted on multiple CCs will be independently processed at the receiver side and can process the PRS to be transmitted in a conventional manner.

[0070] At 318, the second device 303 can send the first positioning reference signal PRS1 on the first component carrier CC1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 on the second component carrier CC2 to the first device 301. If the second device 303 is implemented as a network device (e.g., a base station) and the first device 301 is implemented as a terminal device (e.g., a UE), the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 can be DL PRS, such as the PRS defined in the 3GPP specifications. If the second device 303 is implemented as a terminal device and the first device 301 is implemented as a network device, the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 can be UL PRS, such as the sounding reference signal (SRS). Although not shown, the second device 303 can also indicate to the first device 301 whether the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 have been oversampled.

[0071] At 320, the first device 301 can determine whether oversampling has been applied to the PRS based on the oversampling indication received from the location server 305 or the second device 303. If oversampling has been applied, the first device 301 can oversample the received time-domain PRS1 and PRS2 signals at 321. The oversampling can be performed in the same manner as at the transmitter side, i.e., as described above Figure 4 , by zero-padding in the frequency domain and then performing IFFT processing to obtain more time-domain samples. For convenience, the repeated description of oversampling at the receiver side is omitted here.

[0072] Then, at 322, the first device 301 may jointly process the first positioning reference signal PRS1 received on the first component carrier CC1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 received on the second component carrier CC2 to generate a single positioning measurement result at 322. The positioning measurement result may include time of arrival (TOA) estimation, carrier phase estimation, angle of arrival (AOA) estimation, etc., depending on the positioning scheme implemented in the network. In this method, the PRS sequence length gain may be achieved through carrier aggregation (CA), and the accuracy of the positioning measurement may be improved.

[0073] If the first device 301 determines at 320 that oversampling has not been applied, the first device 301 may process the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 in a conventional manner at 324. For example, the first device 301 may independently process the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 to save its processing power and generate two positioning measurement results.

[0074] At 326, the first device 301 may report the positioning measurement result to the location server 305. The location server 305 may estimate the location of the first device 301 based on the multiple positioning measurement reports received from the first device 301 and the location coordinates of the multiple associated second devices 303. In an exemplary embodiment, the first device 301 may additionally report whether the UE obtains the positioning measurement result through joint processing, and the UE may further report the CC index together with the positioning measurement result, so that the location server 305 knows that the reported positioning measurement result is obtained from the reported CC index.

[0075] Figure 5 Method 400 for jointly processing PRSs received on different CCs according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure is shown. Method 400 may be performed by the first device 301 at Figure 3 Step 322 in the method 300 shown.

[0076] See Figure 5 , at 410, the first device 301 may compensate for the phase offset between the first component carrier CC1 carrying the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second component carrier CC2 carrying the second positioning reference signal PRS2. As described above, the first and second component carriers CC1, CC2 may be affected by different / independent timing / phase errors, so the timing / phase offset between the first and second component carriers CC1, CC2 must be corrected / compensated to estimate the propagation delay. Otherwise, the bandwidth expansion using carrier aggregation may not improve the accuracy of the propagation delay estimation. The phase offset compensation will be described in detail below.

[0077] At 420, the first device 301 may apply a frequency shift in the baseband to a first positioning reference signal PRS1 received on a first component carrier CC1 and a second reference signal PRS2 received on a second component carrier CC2. The frequency shift applied to the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 using the characteristics of the IFFT can eliminate the frequency-domain interval between PRS1 and PRS2 caused by the gap between non-continuous CC1 and CC2 or the guard band between continuous CC1 and CC2, and generate a continuous PRS spectrum in the baseband from the received first positioning reference signal PRS1 and second positioning reference signal PRS2. It can reduce the IFFT window size required for joint processing of PRS1 and PRS2, thereby reducing the IFFT complexity.

[0078] Figure 6 is a schematic diagram showing a frequency shift process of combining PRSs received in different component carriers in the baseband according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure. First, refer to Figure 6 (a), which shows a first positioning reference signal PRS1 transmitted on a first component carrier CC1 and a second positioning reference signal PRS2 transmitted on a second component carrier CC2 at the transmitter side (e.g., at the second device 303). The first component carrier CC1 has a first center frequency f c_1 , and the second component carrier CC2 has a second center frequency f c_2 . As described above, the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 are oversampled by zero-padding on either side. Figure 6 (a) also shows the center frequency f c_12 of the passband of the signal bandwidth from CC1 to CC2, which can be determined as f c_12 = (f c_1 + f c_2 ) / 2. When PRS1 and PRS2 are jointly processed at the receiver side, the center frequency f c_12 of the passband can correspond to the direct current (DC) frequency in the baseband.

[0079] Figure 6 (b) shows the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 in the baseband received at the receiver side (e.g., the first device 301). The first positioning reference signal PRS1 is processed in a first baseband BB1, and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 is processed in a second baseband BB2. As described above, the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 may have been affected by different timing / phase errors associated with the first component carrier CC1 and the second component carrier CC2.

[0080] At Figure 6(c), the timing / phase offset between the first component carrier CC1 and the second component carrier CC2 is corrected / compensated, such as in step 410 of the method 400 shown in Figure 5 However, due to the existence of a white area or guard band between the first component carrier CC1 and the second component carrier CC2, a relatively large IFFT window size is still required when jointly processing the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2, as shown by the thick solid line in Figure 6 (c).

[0081] Refer to Figure 6 (d). A frequency shift can be applied in the baseband to utilize the characteristics of the IFFT to eliminate the interval between the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 in the frequency domain. In an exemplary implementation, a new center frequency can be determined and the frequency shift is applied at this new center frequency. For example, as shown in Figure 6 (d), the DC frequency (vertical arrow) can be used as the center frequency to shift the frequencies of the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2, so that they are in series with each other at the center frequency, generating a continuous PRS sequence spectrum including PRS1 and PRS2. The frequency shift eliminates the interval between PRS1 and PRS2 caused by the guard band blank between the first component carrier CC1 and the second component carrier CC2, thereby generating a continuous PRS sequence spectrum in the baseband from the received first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2. This continuous PRS sequence spectrum can be used for subsequent joint processing of the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2.

[0082] It can be understood that the center frequency can also be determined as other frequencies, and the frequency shift can also be applied in other ways. For example, refer to Figure 6 (c). When the DC frequency (vertical arrow) is regarded as the center frequency, the frequency band from the first symbol of the first positioning reference signal PRS1 to the DC frequency can be shifted, so that the first symbol of the first positioning reference signal PRS1 is adjacent to the last symbol of the second positioning reference signal PRS2. The position of the resulting continuous PRS sequence spectrum relative to the DC frequency is different from that shown in Figure 6 (d), but this difference does not affect the Power Delay Profile (PDP) and path delay estimation.

[0083] In Figure 6(e), the guard bands on either side of the spectrum of the continuous PRS sequence can be ignored, so the IFFT window size M can be reduced to M = 2N for joint IFFT processing of the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 (i.e., the spectrum of the continuous PRS sequence). In an exemplary embodiment, a further frequency shift may be applied to the concatenated PRS1 and PRS2 (as shown in Figure 6 (e)), so that the first symbol of PRS2 in BB2 is at the DC frequency (i.e., regarded as the DC part of the IFFT) (not shown in Figure 6 ). The IFFT window size determines the complexity of the propagation delay estimation algorithm with carrier aggregation. The proposed process can reduce the complexity of the propagation delay estimation algorithm by eliminating the spectral gap between the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 and reducing the IFFT window size. In addition, the joint processing of the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 can recover a single PRS sequence for propagation delay estimation, which can improve the accuracy of propagation delay estimation by utilizing the overall sequence length gain with carrier aggregation.

[0084] Figure 7 is a flowchart showing a method 500 for phase offset compensation according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure. The method 500 may be performed by the first device 301 in Figure 5 step 410 in the method 400 shown.

[0085] Before introducing the method 500, the reasons for performing phase offset compensation will be discussed. In the above formula (2), it is assumed that there is no timing / phase offset between the first component carrier CC1 and the second component carrier CC2, but in fact, this does not happen when the first component carrier CC1 and the second component carrier CC2 are transmitted through different RF chains including at least one hardware component. When considering the timing / phase offset between the first component carrier CC1 and the second component carrier CC2, equation (2) can be rewritten as follows:

[0086]

[0087] In Equation (3), φ0 represents the initial phase of the positioning reference signal at the transmitter, which can be determined by the initial phase of the local oscillator in the RF chain, the timing alignment error (TAE), etc. In Equation (3), the "hat" (^) and "tilde" (~) symbols are used to represent different parameter values for the first component carrier CC1 (including subcarriers from l = 0 to l = (N - 1)) and the second component carrier CC2 (including subcarriers from k = N to K = (2N - 1)). As can be seen from Equation (3), when the first component carrier CC1 and the second component carrier CC2 are jointly processed, the common phase difference (2π*f c *τ1 - φ0) between the first component carrier CC1 and the second component carrier CC2 will cause inter-CC symbol interference, which has an adverse effect on the accuracy of the positioning measurement result. Therefore, it is necessary to correct / compensate the timing / phase offset between the first component carrier CC1 and the second component carrier CC2.

[0088] Reference Figure 7 , at 510, the first device 301 can estimate the first phase θ1 of the first component carrier CC1 and the second phase θ2 of the second component carrier CC2. At 530, the first device 301 can apply a first phase compensation factor to compensate the first phase θ1 of the first component carrier CC1, and apply a second phase compensation factor to compensate the second phase θ2 of the second component carrier CC2, thereby compensating the timing / phase offset between the first component carrier CC1 and the second component carrier CC2.

[0089] Figure 8 is a flowchart showing the steps for estimating the first phase θ1 of the first component carrier CC1 and the second phase θ2 of the second component carrier CC2 according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure. As Figure 8 shown, at 512, the first device 301 can estimate the first propagation delay of the first component carrier CC1 on the first arrival path (e.g., LOS path) from the second device 303 to the first device 301 and the second propagation delay of the second component carrier CC2 For example, the first device 301 can perform an IFFT operation on the channel estimation of each component carrier (see Equation (3)), or correlate the receiver (Rx) PRS with the transmitter (Tx) PRS on each component carrier in the frequency domain or time domain. Then, the first device 301 can view the power delay spectrum (PDP) and estimate the first arrival path and the corresponding propagation delay of the component carrier. The power delay spectrum gives the distribution of the signal power received on multiple paths as a function of the propagation delay, and usually the first arrival path (e.g., LOS path) corresponds to the maximum signal power.

[0090] At 514, the first device 301 can determine the one associated with the first propagation delay The first phase θ1 of the associated first component carrier CC1 and the second propagation delay The second phase θ2 of the associated second component carrier CC2. It can be understood that, as shown in the above equation (3), the determined carrier phase actually includes the phase rotation 2πf caused by the propagation delay τ1 c τ1 and the initial phase φ0 on the transmitter side, that is where, f c_1 and f c_2 are the center frequencies of the first component carrier CC1 and the second component carrier CC2, respectively.

[0091] Figure 9 FIG. shows another method for estimating the first phase θ1 of the first component carrier CC1 and the second phase θ2 of the second component carrier CC2 according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure. The principle utilized by this method is that in the frequency domain, the carrier phase is associated with the direct current (DC) subcarrier of the component carrier having the center frequency fc, as shown in equation (3). The PRS symbol can be forced to be transmitted on the DC subcarrier, and no other signals are scheduled on the DC subcarrier. The phase of the DC subcarrier can be determined as the carrier phase.

[0092] As Figure 9 shown, at 516, the first device 301 can unpack the first phase response of the first positioning reference signal PRS1 received on the first component carrier CC1 and the second phase response of the second positioning reference signal PRS2 received on the second component carrier CC2 in the frequency domain. In this case, the DC subcarrier of the first component carrier CC1 is configured for the first positioning reference signal PRS1, and no other signals are scheduled thereon. The DC subcarrier of the second component carrier CC2 is configured for the second positioning reference signal PRS2, and no other signals are scheduled thereon. The unpacking operation makes the phase response continuous at the 2π discontinuity by adding or subtracting an appropriate multiple of 2π radians as needed. Then at 518, the first device 301 can perform linear interpolation on the unpacked first and second phase responses to determine the phase of the DC subcarrier of the first component carrier CC1 (i.e., the frequency f c_1 ) as the first phase θ1 of the first component carrier CC1, and determine the phase of the DC subcarrier of the second component carrier CC2 (i.e., the frequency f c_2 ) as the second phase θ2 of the first component carrier CC1. Compared with the Figure 8 shown method, Figure 9 the complexity of the shown method is reduced.

[0093] Figure 10 is a flowchart showing a method 520 for determining a phase compensation factor according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure. The method 520 can be performed by the first device 301 at Figure 7Before step 530 in the method 500 shown.

[0094] Refer to Figure 10 , at 522, the first device 301 may perform a frequency flatness check / test on the first component carrier CC1 and the second component carrier CC2 to determine the frequency flatness probability. The frequency flatness check may be performed by calculating the number of channels whose channel gain exceeds the channel threshold, and the frequency flatness probability may be represented by a percentage defined as follows:

[0095] Frequency flatness percentage = 1 - C fading / Total number of channels

[0096] C fading = abs(H l ) < H threshold Number of channels (4) where

[0097] where, H l is the l-th channel, the function abs(H l returns the amplitude of the l-th channel, H threshold is a predetermined channel gain threshold, and C fading is the number of attenuated channels whose channel gain is lower than the channel gain threshold H threshold . The frequency flatness probability / percentage indicates the overall channel quality of the first component carrier CC1 and the second component carrier CC2.

[0098] At 524, the first device 301 may determine a first phase compensation factor for compensating the first phase θ1 of the first component carrier CC1 and a second phase compensation factor for compensating the second phase θ2 of the second component carrier CC2 based on the first phase θ1, the second phase θ2, and the determined frequency flatness probability / percentage. In an example, the phase compensation factor may be determined as follows:

[0099] If the frequency flatness percentage ≥ frequency flatness threshold:

[0100] · First phase compensation factor for CC1 = -θ1

[0101] · Second phase compensation factor for CC2 = -θ2

[0102] Otherwise

[0103] · First phase compensation factor for CC1 = -θ1 - θ avg

[0104] · Second phase compensation factor for CC2 = -θ2 - θ avg (5),

[0105] where, θ avgis the average carrier phase of the aggregated component carriers, i.e., θ avg =(θ1 + θ2) / 2, and the frequency flatness threshold is a threshold configured by the location server 305 or the network device / base station serving the first device 301 when the first device 301 is implemented as a terminal device / UE. As shown in the above equation (5), when the frequency flatness percentage is higher than or equal to the frequency flatness threshold, the phase compensation factor can be set to the negative value of the phase of each component carrier. When the frequency flatness percentage is lower than the frequency flatness threshold, the phase compensation factor can be set to the negative value of the sum of the carrier phase of the component carrier and the average carrier phase of the aggregated component carriers.

[0106] After the phase compensation factors of the first component carrier CC1 and the second component carrier CC2 have been determined, the first device 301 can apply the phase compensation factors to compensate the carrier phases θ1, θ2 of the first component carrier CC1 and the second component carrier CC2. For example, in Figure 7 step 530 of the method 500 shown. The phase compensation can be expressed as follows:

[0107] If the frequency flatness percentage ≥ frequency flatness threshold:

[0108] · CC1 phase compensation,

[0109] · CC2 phase compensation,

[0110] Otherwise

[0111] · CC1 phase compensation,

[0112] · CC1 phase compensation,

[0113] where and are the l-th channel estimates of the first component carrier CC1 and the second component carrier CC2, respectively.

[0114] Figure 11Illustrates a positioning process 600 according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure. When the first device 301 determines a phase compensation factor for jointly processing a first positioning reference signal PRS1 received on a first component carrier CC1 and a second positioning reference signal PRS2 received on a second component carrier CC2, the first device 301, the second device 303, and the location server 305 may perform the process 600. In the process 600, the first device 301 may signal at least one of a frequency flatness probability or an applied phase compensation factor to the second device 303 and / or the location server 305. In the case of multi-RTT positioning, the second device 303 may use the phase compensation factor for subsequent PRS transmissions and / or receptions. The second device 303 may also use the frequency flatness probability to determine the validity of the phase compensation factor that varies over time (e.g., in the next X time slots or subframes, where X is a positive integer determined based on the frequency flatness probability). The location server 305 may use the frequency flatness probability to estimate the confidence level of the positioning measurement related to the first device 301.

[0115] Reference Figure 11 , at 610, the first device 301 may report at least one of a frequency flatness probability or an applied phase compensation factor for the component carrier to the second device 303, for example, via RRC signaling. At 612, the first device 301 may report at least one of a frequency flatness probability or an applied phase compensation factor for the component carrier to the location server 305, for example, via an LPP message.

[0116] At 614, the second device 303 may apply the received phase compensation factor to subsequent transmissions of the first positioning reference signal PRS1 on the first component carrier CC1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 on the second component carrier CC2. It may reduce the timing / phase offset between the first component carrier CC1 and the second component carrier CC2 from the transmitter side. The receiver (i.e., the first device 301) may iteratively determine the phase compensation factor for the component carrier to improve the phase compensation accuracy, thereby improving the positioning measurement accuracy.

[0117] In an example, the second device 303 may determine the validity of the received phase compensation factor based on the frequency flatness probability. If the frequency flatness probability has a high percentage value, the second device 303 may apply the phase compensation factor to subsequent positioning reference signals PRS1, PRS2 in more time slots or subframes. If the frequency flatness probability has a small percentage value, the second device 303 may apply the phase compensation factor in fewer time slots or subframes, or the second device 303 may not apply the phase compensation factor.

[0118] At 616, in the case of multi-RTT positioning, the first device 301 may apply a first phase compensation factor for the first component carrier CC1 to a third positioning reference signal PRS3 to be transmitted on the first component carrier CC1, and apply a second phase compensation factor for the second component carrier CC2 to a fourth positioning reference signal PRS4 to be transmitted on the second component carrier CC2. It can be understood that the first device 301 and the second device 303 may operate in a time division duplex (TDD) mode, where the first component carrier CC1 and the second component carrier CC2 each include a downlink time slot and an uplink time slot. If the first device 301 is implemented as a terminal device and the second device 303 is implemented as a network device, the first and second positioning reference signals PRS1, PRS2 may be downlink positioning reference signals, and the third and fourth positioning reference signals PRS3, PRS4 may be uplink sounding reference signals (SRS). If the first device 301 is implemented as a network device and the second device 303 is implemented as a terminal device, the first and second positioning reference signals PRS1, PRS2 may be uplink sounding reference signals (SRS), and the third and fourth positioning reference signals PRS3, PRS4 may be downlink positioning reference signals.

[0119] At 618, the first device 301 may send a phase compensation indication to the second device 303. The phase compensation indication may indicate whether the third and fourth positioning reference signals PRS3, PRS4 to be transmitted to the second device 303 have been phase compensated.

[0120] At 620, the first device 301 may transmit the third positioning reference signal PRS3 on the first component carrier CC1 and the fourth positioning reference signal PRS4 on the second component carrier CC2 to the second device 303. Although Figure 11 not shown in the figure, before transmitting the third positioning reference signal PRS3 on the first component carrier CC1 and the fourth positioning reference signal PRS4 on the second component carrier CC2, the first device 301 may also oversample the third positioning reference signal PRS3 and the fourth positioning reference signal PRS4 based on an oversampling indication received from the second device 303 or the location server 305.

[0121] At 622, if the phase compensation indication received in step 618 indicates that the phase offset between the third positioning reference signal PRS3 and the fourth positioning reference signal PRS4 has not been compensated at the first device 301, the second device 303 may perform phase compensation on the received third positioning reference signal PRS3 and fourth positioning reference signal PRS4. The phase compensation step 622 may be similar to that in Figure 7The phase compensation step 530 performed at the first device 301 in the method 500 shown is not described repeatedly here for convenience. If the phase compensation indication received in step 618 indicates that the first device 301 has compensated the phase offset between the third positioning reference signal PRS3 and the fourth positioning reference signal PRS4, step 622 may be omitted.

[0122] Although Figure 11 not shown in the figure, the second device 303 may jointly process the third positioning reference signal PRS3 and the fourth positioning reference signal PRS4 to obtain a single PRS sequence. Then, the second device 303 may estimate the round-trip delay time and report the round-trip delay time estimate to the location server 305.

[0123] Figure 12 is a schematic block diagram showing a device 700 according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure. The device 700 may be implemented to include or form at least a part of the first device 301 discussed above to perform operations related to the first device 301. Since the operations related to the first device 301 have been discussed above with reference to Figure 1-11 the operations related to the first device 301 will be briefly described here, and the details may be referred to the above description.

[0124] Referring to Figure 12 , the device 700 may include a first module 710 for receiving, at the first device 301, a first positioning reference signal PRS1 on a first component carrier CC1 and a second positioning reference signal PRS2 on a second component carrier CC2 from the second device 303; and a second module 720 for jointly processing the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 to generate a positioning measurement result in response to an oversampling indication indicating that oversampling is applied to the positioning reference signal.

[0125] In an exemplary embodiment, the first device 301 is a terminal device and the second device 303 is a network device. In this case, the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 are downlink positioning reference signals. The oversampling indication may be received from the location server 305 or from the second device 303.

[0126] In an exemplary embodiment, the first device 301 is a network device and the second device 303 is a terminal device. In this case, the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 are sounding reference signals. The oversampling indication may be received from the location server 305.

[0127] In an exemplary embodiment, the oversampling indication may further include information on the oversampling factors for a first positioning reference signal PRS1 and a second positioning reference signal PRS2. In an example, the oversampling factor may be equal to the total bandwidth obtained by aggregating a first component carrier CC1 and a second component carrier CC2.

[0128] In an exemplary embodiment, the second module 720 may include a first sub-module 730 for compensating for the phase offset between the first component carrier CC1 and the second component carrier CC2; and a second sub-module 740 for applying a frequency shift to the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 to obtain a continuous positioning reference signal spectrum in the baseband from the received first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the received second positioning reference signal PRS2. In an example, the second sub-module 740 may apply a frequency shift to concatenate the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 at the center frequency f c_12 therebetween in the frequency domain. When applying the frequency shift, the blank or guard band between the first component carrier CC1 and the second component carrier CC2 is removed.

[0129] In an exemplary embodiment, the first sub-module 730 may include a first unit 731 for estimating a first phase θ1 of the first component carrier CC1 and a second phase θ2 of the second component carrier CC2; and a second unit 733 for applying a first phase compensation factor to compensate for the first phase θ1 of the first component carrier CC1 and applying a second phase compensation factor to compensate for the second phase θ2 of the second component carrier CC2.

[0130] In an exemplary embodiment, the first unit 731 may include a first sub-unit 732 for estimating a first propagation delay of the first component carrier CC1 and a second propagation delay of the second component carrier CC2 on a first arrival path (e.g., LOS path) from the second device 303 to the first device 301; and a second sub-unit 734 for determining the first phase θ1 of the first component carrier CC1 associated with the first propagation delay and the second phase θ2 of the second component carrier CC2 associated with the second propagation delay.

[0131] In an exemplary embodiment, the first unit 731 may include a third sub-unit 736 for unpacking a first phase response of a first positioning reference signal PRS1 and a second phase response of a second positioning reference signal PRS2 in the frequency domain. In this case, a first direct current (DC) sub-carrier of the first component carrier CC1 is configured for the first positioning reference signal PRS1, and no other signals are scheduled on the first DC sub-carrier. A second DC sub-carrier of the second component carrier CC2 is configured for the second positioning reference signal PRS2, and no other signals are scheduled on the second DC sub-carrier. The first unit 731 may further include a fourth sub-unit 738 for performing linear interpolation on the first phase response and the second phase response to determine a first phase θ1 corresponding to the first DC sub-carrier of the first component carrier CC1 as the first phase of the first component carrier CC1, and a second phase θ2 corresponding to the second DC sub-carrier of the second component carrier CC2 as the second phase of the second component carrier CC2.

[0132] In an exemplary embodiment, the first sub-module 730 may further include a third unit 735 for performing a frequency flatness check on the first component carrier CC1 and the second component carrier CC2 to determine a frequency flatness probability; and a fourth unit 737 for determining a first phase compensation factor and a second phase compensation factor based at least on the first phase θ1 of the first component carrier CC1, the second phase θ2 of the second component carrier CC2, and whether the frequency flatness probability is greater than or equal to a threshold. The threshold may be configured from the location server 305, or when the first device 301 is a terminal device and the second device 303 is a network device serving the terminal device, the threshold may be configured from the second device 303.

[0133] In an exemplary embodiment, the apparatus 700 may further include a third module 750 for reporting at least one of the following to at least one of the second device 303 or the location server 305: the frequency flatness probability, the first phase compensation factor for the first component carrier CC1, or the second phase compensation factor for the second component carrier CC2.

[0134] In an exemplary embodiment, the apparatus 700 may further include a fourth module 760 for applying a first phase compensation factor and a second phase compensation factor to compensate for a third positioning reference signal PRS3 and a fourth positioning reference signal PRS4 respectively; and a fifth module 770 for transmitting the compensated third positioning reference signal PRS3 to the second device 303 on a first component carrier CC1 and transmitting the compensated fourth positioning reference signal PRS4 to the second device 303 on a second component carrier CC2. In an example, the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 may be downlink positioning reference signals, and the third positioning reference signal PRS3 and the fourth positioning reference signal PRS4 may be uplink sounding reference signals. In another example, the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 may be uplink sounding reference signals, and the third positioning reference signal PRS3 and the fourth positioning reference signal PRS4 may be downlink positioning reference signals.

[0135] In an exemplary embodiment, the apparatus 700 may further include a sixth module 780 for notifying the second device 303 of the phase compensation performed on the third positioning reference signal PRS3 and the fourth positioning reference signal PRS4.

[0136] In an exemplary embodiment, the apparatus 700 may further include a seventh module 790 for oversampling the first positioning reference signal PRS1 received on the first component carrier CC1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 received on the second component carrier CC2 in the time domain in response to an oversampling indication before the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 are jointly processed.

[0137] In an exemplary embodiment, the seventh module 790 may include a first sub-module 792 for zero-padding resource elements on either side of the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 in the frequency domain to a bandwidth indicated by at least an oversampling factor; and a second sub-module for converting the zero-padded first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the zero-padded second positioning reference signal PRS2 from the frequency domain to the time domain.

[0138] Figure 13 is a schematic block diagram showing an apparatus 800 according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure. The apparatus 800 may be implemented to include or form at least a part of the second device 303 discussed above to perform operations related to the second device 303. Since the operations related to the second device 303 have been discussed above with reference to Figure 1-11 the operations related to the second device 303, the modules of the apparatus 800 will be briefly described here, and the details may refer to the above description.

[0139] Reference Figure 13, the apparatus 800 may include a first module 810 configured to oversample a first positioning reference signal PRS1 and a second positioning reference signal PRS2 in response to an oversampling indication indicating that oversampling is applied to the positioning reference signal; and a second module 820 configured to transmit the first positioning reference signal PRS1 to a first device 301 on a first component carrier CC1 and transmit the second positioning reference signal PRS2 to the first device 301 on a second component carrier CC2.

[0140] In an exemplary embodiment, the first module 810 may include a first sub-module 812 configured to zero-pad resource elements on either side of the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 in the frequency domain to a bandwidth that is at least equal to the total bandwidth of the first component carrier CC1 and the second component carrier CC2.

[0141] In an exemplary embodiment, the first device 301 may be a terminal device, and the second device 303 may be a network device. The oversampling indication may be received from a location server 305. In another exemplary embodiment, the first device 301 may be a network device, and the second device 303 may be a terminal device. The oversampling indication may be received from the location server 305 or from the first device 301. In an example, the oversampling indication may further include information on an oversampling factor for oversampling the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2.

[0142] In an exemplary embodiment, the first module 810 may further include a third module 830 configured to receive from the first device 301 at least one of the following: a frequency flatness probability for the first component carrier CC1 and the second component carrier CC2, a first phase compensation factor for the first component carrier CC1, or a second phase compensation factor for the second component carrier CC2.

[0143] In an exemplary embodiment, the first module 810 may further include a fourth module 840 configured to apply the first phase compensation factor and the second phase compensation factor to subsequent transmissions of the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2, respectively.

[0144] In an exemplary embodiment, the first module 810 may further include a fifth module 850 for receiving a third positioning reference signal PRS3 on a first component carrier CC1 and a fourth positioning reference signal PRS4 on a second component carrier CC2 from the first device 301; and a sixth module 860 for applying a first phase compensation factor and a second phase compensation factor to compensate the phases of the third positioning reference signal PRS3 and the fourth positioning reference signal PRS4, respectively. In an example, the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 are downlink positioning reference signals, and the third positioning reference signal PRS3 and the fourth positioning reference signal PRS4 are uplink sounding reference signals. In another example, the first positioning reference signal PRS1 and the second positioning reference signal PRS2 are uplink sounding reference signals, and the third positioning reference signal PRS3 and the fourth positioning reference signal PRS4 are downlink positioning reference signals.

[0145] Figure 14 is a schematic block diagram showing a device 900 according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure. The device 900 may be implemented to include or constitute at least a part of the location server 305 discussed above to perform operations related to the location server 305. Since the operations related to the location server 305 have been discussed above with reference to Figure 1-11 the operations related to the location server 305, the modules of the device 900 will be briefly described here, and the details can be referred to the above description.

[0146] Reference Figure 14 , the device 900 may include a first module 910 for sending an oversampling indication indicating that oversampling is applied to a positioning reference signal to at least one of a network device or a terminal device. In an example, the oversampling indication may further include information on an oversampling factor for oversampling the positioning reference signal.

[0147] In an exemplary embodiment, the device 900 may further include a second module 920 for receiving at least one of the following from at least one of a network device or a terminal device: a frequency flatness probability for a first component carrier CC1 and a second component carrier CC2, a first phase compensation factor for the first component carrier CC1, or a second phase compensation factor for the second component carrier CC2.

[0148] Figure 15 is a block diagram showing an exemplary communication system 1000 in which embodiments of the present disclosure may be implemented. As Figure 15 shown, the communication system 1000 may include a terminal device 1010, a network device 1020, and a network function node 1030. The terminal device 1010 may be implemented as Figure 1 the UE 110 shown in Figure 1For any one of the base stations 120 shown in Figure 1 the location server 130 shown in

[0149] Referring to Figure 15 , the terminal device 1010 may include one or more processors 1011, one or more memories 1012, and one or more transceivers 1013, which are interconnected by one or more buses 1014. The one or more buses 1014 may be address, data, or control buses and may include any interconnection mechanism, such as a series of lines on a motherboard or integrated circuit, optical fiber, optical device, or other optical communication device, etc. Each of the one or more transceivers 1013 may include a receiver and a transmitter, which are connected to one or more antennas 1016. The terminal device 1010 may communicate wirelessly with the network device 1020 via the one or more antennas 1016. The one or more memories 1012 may include instructions 1015, which when executed by the one or more processors 1011, may cause the terminal device 1010 to perform the operations and processes related to the UE 110 described above.

[0150] The network device 1020 may include one or more processors 1021, one or more memories 1022, one or more transceivers 1023, and one or more network interfaces 1027, which are interconnected by one or more buses 1024. The one or more buses 1024 may be address, data, or control buses and may include any interconnection mechanism, such as a series of lines on a motherboard or integrated circuit, optical fiber, optical device, or other optical communication device, etc. Each of the one or more transceivers 1023 may include a receiver and a transmitter, which are connected to one or more antennas 1026. The network device 1020 may operate as a base station for the terminal device 1010 and communicate wirelessly with the terminal device 1010 via the one or more antennas 1026. The one or more network interfaces 1027 may provide a wired or wireless communication link through which the network device 1020 may communicate with other network devices, entities, elements, or functions. For example, the network device 1020 may communicate with the network function node 1030 via a backhaul connection 1028. The one or more memories 1022 may include instructions 1025, which when executed by one or more processors 1021, may cause the network device 1020 to perform operations and processes related to any one of the base stations 120.

[0151] The network function node 1030 may include one or more processors 1031, one or more memories 1032, and one or more network interfaces 1037 interconnected by one or more buses 1034. The one or more buses 1034 may be address, data, or control buses and may include any interconnection mechanism, such as a series of lines on a motherboard or integrated circuit, optical fibers, optical devices, or other optical communication devices. The network function node 1030 may operate as a core network function node and communicate with the network device 1020 via one or more links in a wired or wireless manner. The one or more network interfaces 1037 may provide wired or wireless communication links through which the network function node 1030 may communicate with other network devices, entities, components, or functions. The one or more memories 1032 may include instructions 1035 which, when executed by the one or more processors 1031, may cause the network function node 1030 to perform the operations and processes described above related to the location server 130.

[0152] One or more of the processors 1011, 1021, and 1031 discussed above may be of any suitable type for a local technology network and may include general-purpose processors, dedicated processors, microprocessors, digital signal processors (DSPs), one or more processors in a multi-core processor architecture based on processors, and one or more of dedicated processors (such as processors developed based on field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and application specific integrated circuits (ASICs)). One or more of the processors 1011, 1021, and 1031 may be configured to control and cooperate with other elements of the UE / network device / network element to perform the processes described above.

[0153] One or more of the memories 1012, 1022, and 1032 may include at least one storage medium in various forms, such as transient memory and / or non-transient memory. Transient memory may include, but is not limited to, for example, random access memory (RAM) or cache. Non-transient memory may include, but is not limited to, for example, read-only memory (ROM), hard disk, flash memory, etc. The term "non-transient" as used herein is a limitation on the medium itself (i.e., tangible, rather than a signal), rather than a limitation on the persistence of data storage (e.g., RAM vs. ROM). In addition, one or more of the memories 1012, 1022, and 1032 may include, but are not limited to, electrical, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, infrared, or semiconductor systems, devices, or equipment, or any combination thereof.

[0154] It will be understood that the blocks in the drawings can be implemented in various ways, including software, hardware, firmware, or any combination thereof. In some embodiments, one or more blocks can be implemented using software and / or firmware, e.g., machine-executable instructions stored in a storage medium. In addition to or instead of machine-executable instructions, some or all of the blocks in the drawings can be implemented at least in part by one or more hardware logic components. For example, example types of hardware logic components that can be used include field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), application-specific standard products (ASSPs), systems on a chip (SOCs), complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs), etc.

[0155] Some exemplary embodiments further provide program instructions or commands that, when executed by one or more processors, can cause a device or apparatus to perform the above processes. The program instructions for performing the processes of the exemplary embodiments can be written in any combination of one or more programming languages. The program instructions can be provided to one or more processors or controllers of a general-purpose computer, a special-purpose computer, or other programmable data processing device, such that when the program instructions are executed by the processor or controller, the functions / operations specified in the flowchart and / or block diagram can be implemented. The program instructions can be executed entirely on the machine, or partially on the machine as a stand-alone software package, or partially on the machine and partially on a remote machine, or entirely on a remote machine or server.

[0156] Some exemplary embodiments further provide a computer program product or a computer-readable medium, in which program instructions or commands are stored. The computer-readable medium can be any tangible medium that can contain or store a program for an instruction execution system, apparatus, or device, or related thereto. The machine-readable medium can be a machine-readable signal medium or a machine-readable storage medium. The machine-readable medium can include, but is not limited to, electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, infrared, or semiconductor systems, apparatus, or devices, or any suitable combination of the above media. More specific examples of the machine-readable storage medium include electrical connections with one or more wires, portable computer floppy disks, hard disks, random access memory (RAM), read-only memory (ROM), erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM or flash memory), optical fibers, portable compact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM), optical storage devices, magnetic storage devices, or any suitable combination of the above devices.

[0157] As used herein, "at least one of the following: <list of two or more elements>" and "at least one of <list of two or more elements>" and similar phrases, where the list of two or more elements is joined by "and" or "or", mean any one of the at least elements, or any two or more of the at least elements, or all of the at least elements.

[0158] In addition, although the operations are described in a particular order, this should not be construed as requiring that the operations be performed in the particular order shown or in sequential order, or that all illustrated operations be performed, to achieve desirable results. In some cases, multitasking and parallel processing may be advantageous. Similarly, although some specific implementation details are included in the above discussion, these details should not be construed as limiting the scope of the present disclosure, but rather as descriptions of features that may be specific to particular embodiments. Certain features described in separate embodiments may also be implemented in combination in a single embodiment. Conversely, the various features described in a single embodiment may also be implemented separately in multiple embodiments or in any suitable sub-combination.

[0159] Although the subject matter has been described in language specific to structural features and / or methodological acts, it is to be understood that the subject matter defined in the appended claims is not limited to the specific features or acts described above. Rather, the above specific features and operations are disclosed as examples for implementing the claims.

Claims

1. A first device in a communication network, comprising: at least one processor; and at least one memory storing instructions which, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the first device to at least: receive a first positioning reference signal on a first component carrier and a second positioning reference signal on a second component carrier from a second device in the communication network; and jointly process the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal to generate a positioning measurement result in response to an oversampling indication indicating that oversampling has been applied to the positioning reference signal.

2. The first device according to claim 1, wherein, The first device is a terminal device, the second device is a network device, the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal are downlink positioning reference signals, and the oversampling indication is received from a location server in the communication network or from the second device.

3. The first device according to claim 1, wherein, The first device is a network device, the second device is a terminal device, the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal are sounding reference signals, and the oversampling indication is received from a location server in the communication network.

4. The first device according to claim 1, wherein The oversampling indication further includes information associated with an oversampling factor for the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal.

5. The first device according to claim 4, wherein, The at least one memory further stores instructions which, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the first device to at least: oversample the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal in the time domain in response to the oversampling indication before jointly processing the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal.

6. The first device according to claim 5, wherein, Oversampling the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal in the time domain includes: zero-padding resource elements on either side of the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal in the frequency domain to at least reach a bandwidth indicated by the oversampling factor; and converting the zero-padded first positioning reference signal and the zero-padded second positioning reference signal from the frequency domain to the time domain.

7. The first device according to claim 1, wherein, Jointly processing the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal includes: compensating for a phase offset between the first component carrier and the second component carrier; and applying a frequency shift to the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal to obtain a continuous positioning reference signal spectrum in the baseband from the received first positioning reference signal and the received second positioning reference signal.

8. The first device according to claim 7, wherein, The frequency shift is applied to concatenate the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal at a center frequency between the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal in the frequency domain, and when the frequency shift is applied in the baseband, a frequency interval between the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal caused by a blank or guard band between the first component carrier and the second component carrier is removed.

9. The first device according to claim 7, wherein Compensating for a phase offset between the first component carrier and the second component carrier includes: estimating a first phase of the first component carrier and a second phase of the second component carrier; and Apply a first phase compensation factor to compensate the first phase of the first component carrier, and apply a second phase compensation factor to compensate the second phase of the second component carrier.

10. The first device according to claim 9, wherein, Estimating the first phase of the first component carrier and the second phase of the second component carrier includes: estimating a first propagation delay of the first component carrier and a second propagation delay of the second component carrier on a first arrival path from the second device to the first device; and determining the first phase of the first component carrier associated with the first propagation delay and the second phase of the second component carrier associated with the second propagation delay.

11. The first device according to claim 9, wherein, Estimating the first phase of the first component carrier and the second phase of the second component carrier includes: when a first DC subcarrier of the first component carrier is configured for the first positioning reference signal and a second DC subcarrier of the second component carrier is configured for the second positioning reference signal, unpacking a first phase response of the first positioning reference signal and a second phase response of the second positioning reference signal in the frequency domain; and performing linear interpolation on the first phase response and the second phase response to determine the phase corresponding to the first DC subcarrier of the first component carrier as the first phase of the first component carrier, and determining the phase corresponding to the second DC subcarrier of the second component carrier as the second phase of the second component carrier.

12. The first device according to claim 9, wherein, The at least one memory further stores instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the first device to at least: perform a frequency flatness check on the first component carrier and the second component carrier to determine a frequency flatness probability; and determine the first phase compensation factor and the second phase compensation factor at least based on the first phase of the first component carrier, the second phase of the second component carrier, and whether the frequency flatness probability is greater than or equal to a threshold.

13. The first device according to claim 12, wherein, The threshold is configured from a location server in the communication network, or when the first device is a terminal device and the second device is a network device serving the terminal device, the threshold is configured from the second device.

14. The first device according to claim 12, wherein, The at least one memory further stores instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the first device to at least: report at least one of the following to at least one of the second device or the location server in the communication network: the frequency flatness probability, the first phase compensation factor for the first component carrier, or the second phase compensation factor for the second component carrier.

15. The first device according to claim 12, wherein, The at least one memory further stores instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the first device to at least: apply the first phase compensation factor and the second phase compensation factor to compensate a third positioning reference signal and a fourth positioning reference signal, respectively; and Transmit a compensated third positioning reference signal on the first component carrier to the second device and transmit a compensated fourth positioning reference signal on the second component carrier to the second device.

16. The first device according to claim 15, wherein, The at least one memory further stores instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the first device to at least: Notify the second device of the phase compensation performed on the third positioning reference signal and the fourth positioning reference signal.

17. The first device according to claim 15, wherein, The first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal are downlink positioning reference signals, and the third positioning reference signal and the fourth positioning reference signal are uplink sounding reference signals, or The first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal are uplink sounding reference signals, and the third positioning reference signal and the fourth positioning reference signal are downlink positioning reference signals.

18. A second device in a communication network, comprising: At least one processor; And At least one memory storing instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the second device to at least: Oversample a first positioning reference signal and a second positioning reference signal in response to an oversampling indication indicating oversampling of the positioning reference signal; And Transmit the first positioning reference signal on a first component carrier to a first device in the communication network and transmit the second positioning reference signal on a second component carrier to the first device.

19. The second device according to claim 18, wherein, Oversampling the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal includes: Zero-padding resource elements on either side of the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal in the frequency domain to a bandwidth at least equal to the total bandwidth of the first component carrier and the second component carrier; and Converting the zero-padded first positioning reference signal and the zero-padded second positioning reference signal from the frequency domain to the time domain.

20. The second device according to claim 18, wherein, The first device is a terminal device, the second device is a network device, the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal are downlink positioning reference signals, and the oversampling indication is received from a location server in the communication network.

21. The second device according to claim 18, wherein, The first device is a network device, the second device is a terminal device, the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal are sounding reference signals, and the oversampling indication is received from a location server in the communication network or from the first device.

22. The second device according to claim 18, wherein, The oversampling indication further includes information associated with an oversampling factor used to oversample the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal.

23. The second device according to claim 18, wherein, The at least one memory further stores instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the second device to at least: Receive from the first device at least one of the following: a frequency flatness probability for the first component carrier and the second component carrier, a first phase compensation factor for the first component carrier, or a second phase compensation factor for the second component carrier.

24. The second device according to claim 23, wherein The at least one memory further stores instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the second device to at least: Apply the first phase compensation factor and the second phase compensation factor to subsequent transmissions of the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal, respectively.

25. The second device according to claim 23, wherein, The at least one memory further stores instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the second device to at least: Receive from the first device a third positioning reference signal on the first component carrier and a fourth positioning reference signal on the second component carrier; And Apply the first phase compensation factor and the second phase compensation factor to compensate the phases of the third positioning reference signal and the fourth positioning reference signal, respectively.

26. The second device according to claim 25, wherein, The first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal are downlink positioning reference signals, and the third positioning reference signal and the fourth positioning reference signal are uplink sounding reference signals, or The first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal are uplink sounding reference signals, and the third positioning reference signal and the fourth positioning reference signal are downlink positioning reference signals.

27. A location server in a communication network, comprising: At least one processor; And At least one memory storing instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the location server to at least: Send an oversampling indication indicating oversampling applied to a positioning reference signal to at least one of a network device or a terminal device in the communication network.

28. The location server according to claim 27, wherein, The at least one memory further stores instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the location server to at least: Receive from at least one of the network device or the terminal device at least one of the following: a flatness probability for a first component carrier and a second component carrier, a first phase compensation factor for the first component carrier, or a second phase compensation factor for the second component carrier.

29. The location server according to claim 27, wherein, The oversampling indication further includes information associated with an oversampling factor used to oversample the positioning reference signal.

30. A method, comprising: At a first device in a communication network, receive from a second device in the communication network a first positioning reference signal on a first component carrier and a second positioning reference signal on a second component carrier; And Jointly process the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal to generate a positioning measurement result in response to an oversampling indication indicating oversampling applied to the positioning reference signal.

31. The method according to claim 30, wherein, The first device is a terminal device, the second device is a network device, the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal are downlink positioning reference signals, and the oversampling indication is received from a location server in the communication network or from the second device.

32. The method according to claim 30, wherein, The first device is a network device, the second device is a terminal device, the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal are sounding reference signals, and the oversampling indication is received from a location server in the communication network.

33. The method according to claim 30, wherein, The oversampling indication further includes information associated with an oversampling factor for the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal.

34. The method according to claim 33, further comprising: Before jointly processing the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal, oversampling the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal in the time domain in response to the oversampling indication.

35. The method according to claim 34, wherein, Oversampling the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal in the time domain includes: Zero-padding resource elements on either side of the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal in the frequency domain to at least reach the bandwidth indicated by the oversampling factor; and Converting the zero-padded first positioning reference signal and the zero-padded second positioning reference signal from the frequency domain to the time domain.

36. The method according to claim 30, wherein, Jointly processing the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal includes: Compensating for a phase offset between the first component carrier and the second component carrier; and Performing a frequency shift on the obtained first positioning reference signal and the obtained second positioning reference signal to obtain a continuous positioning reference signal spectrum in the baseband from the received first positioning reference signal and the received second positioning reference signal.

37. The method according to claim 36, wherein The frequency shift is applied to concatenate the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal at a center frequency between the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal in the frequency domain, and when the frequency shift is applied in the baseband, a frequency interval between the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal caused by a blank or guard band between the first component carrier and the second component carrier is removed.

38. The method according to claim 36, wherein, Compensating for a phase offset between the first component carrier and the second component carrier includes: Estimating a first phase of the first component carrier and a second phase of the second component carrier; and Applying a first phase compensation factor to compensate the first phase of the first component carrier and applying a second phase compensation factor to compensate the second phase of the second component carrier.

39. The method according to claim 38, wherein, Estimating a first phase of the first component carrier and a second phase of the second component carrier includes: Estimating a first propagation delay of the first component carrier and a second propagation delay of the second component carrier on a first arrival path from the second device to the first device; and Determining the first phase of the first component carrier associated with the first propagation delay and the second phase of the second component carrier associated with the second propagation delay.

40. The method according to claim 38, wherein, Estimating the first phase of the first component carrier and the second phase of the second component carrier includes: In a case where a first direct current (DC) subcarrier of the first component carrier is configured for the first positioning reference signal and a second DC subcarrier of the second component carrier is configured for the second positioning reference signal, unpack a first phase response of the first positioning reference signal and a second phase response of the second positioning reference signal in a frequency domain; and Perform linear interpolation on the first phase response and the second phase response to determine a phase corresponding to the first DC subcarrier of the first component carrier as the first phase of the first component carrier, and determine a phase corresponding to the second DC subcarrier of the second component carrier as the second phase of the second component carrier.

41. The method according to claim 38, further comprising: Perform a frequency flatness check on the first component carrier and the second component carrier to determine a frequency flatness probability; And Determine the first phase compensation factor and the second phase compensation factor based at least on the first phase of the first component carrier, the second phase of the second component carrier, and whether the frequency flatness probability is higher than or equal to a threshold.

42. The method according to claim 41, wherein The threshold is configured from a location server in the communication network, or when the first device is a terminal device and the second device is a network device serving the terminal device, the threshold is configured from the second device.

43. The method according to claim 41, further comprising: Report at least one of the following to at least one of the second device or the location server in the communication network: the frequency flatness probability, the first phase compensation factor for the first component carrier, or the second phase compensation factor for the second component carrier.

44. The method according to claim 41, further comprising: Apply the first phase compensation factor and the second phase compensation factor to compensate a third positioning reference signal and a fourth positioning reference signal respectively; And Transmit the compensated third positioning reference signal to the second device on the first component carrier and transmit the compensated fourth positioning reference signal to the second device on the second component carrier.

45. The method according to claim 44, further comprising: Notify the second device of the phase compensation performed on the third positioning reference signal and the fourth positioning reference signal.

46. The method according to claim 44, wherein, The first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal are downlink positioning reference signals, and the third positioning reference signal and the fourth positioning reference signal are uplink sounding reference signals, or The first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal are uplink sounding reference signals, and the third positioning reference signal and the fourth positioning reference signal are downlink positioning reference signals.

47. A method, comprising: At a second device in a communication network, in response to an oversampling indication indicating that oversampling is applied to a positioning reference signal, perform oversampling on a first positioning reference signal and a second positioning reference signal; And Transmit the first positioning reference signal on a first component carrier to a first device in the communication network and transmit the second positioning reference signal to the first device on a second component carrier.

48. The method according to claim 47, wherein Oversampling the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal includes: Zero-padding resource elements on either side of the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal in the frequency domain to a bandwidth that is at least equal to the total bandwidth of the first component carrier and the second component carrier; and Converting the zero-padded first positioning reference signal and the zero-padded second positioning reference signal from the frequency domain to the time domain.

49. The method according to claim 47, wherein, The first device is a terminal device, the second device is a network device, the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal are downlink positioning reference signals, and the oversampling indication is received from a location server in the communication network.

50. The method according to claim 47, wherein The first device is a network device, the second device is a terminal device, the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal are sounding reference signals, and the oversampling indication is received from a location server in the communication network or from the first device.

51. The method according to claim 47, wherein The oversampling indication further includes information associated with an oversampling factor used to oversample the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal.

52. The method according to claim 47, further comprising: Receiving from the first device at least one of the following: a frequency flatness probability for the first component carrier and the second component carrier, a first phase compensation factor for the first component carrier, or a second phase compensation factor for the second component carrier.

53. The method according to claim 52, further comprising: Applying the first phase compensation factor and the second phase compensation factor to subsequent transmissions of the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal, respectively.

54. The method according to claim 52, further comprising: Receiving from the first device a third positioning reference signal on the first component carrier and a fourth positioning reference signal on the second component carrier; and Applying the first phase compensation factor and the second phase compensation factor to compensate the phase of the third positioning reference signal and the phase of the fourth positioning reference signal, respectively.

55. The method according to claim 54, wherein, The first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal are downlink positioning reference signals, and the third positioning reference signal and the fourth positioning reference signal are uplink sounding reference signals, or The first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal are uplink sounding reference signals, and the third positioning reference signal and the fourth positioning reference signal are downlink positioning reference signals.

56. A method, comprising: Sending, from a location server in a communication network, an oversampling indication indicating to apply oversampling to a positioning reference signal to at least one of a network device or a terminal device in the communication network.

57. The method according to claim 56, further comprising: Receive at least one of the following from at least one of the network device or the terminal device: the frequency flatness probability for the first component carrier and the second component carrier, the first phase compensation factor for the first component carrier, or the second phase compensation factor for the second component carrier.

58. The method according to claim 56, wherein, The oversampling indication further includes information associated with an oversampling factor for oversampling the positioning reference signal.

59. An apparatus, comprising: A module for receiving, at a first device in a communication network, a first positioning reference signal on a first component carrier and a second positioning reference signal on a second component carrier from a second device in the communication network; And A module for jointly processing the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal to generate a positioning measurement result in response to an oversampling indication indicating that oversampling is applied to the positioning reference signal.

60. An apparatus, comprising: A module for oversampling a first positioning reference signal and a second positioning reference signal in response to an oversampling indication indicating that oversampling is applied to the positioning reference signal at a second device in a communication network; And A module for transmitting the first positioning reference signal on the first component carrier to the first device in the communication network and transmitting the second positioning reference signal on the second component carrier to the first device.

61. An apparatus, comprising: A module for sending, from a location server in a communication network, an oversampling indication indicating that oversampling is applied to a positioning reference signal to at least one of a network device or a terminal device in the communication network.

62. A computer-readable medium, comprising instructions that, when executed by a device, cause the device to at least perform the following: Receive, at a first device in a communication network, a first positioning reference signal on a first component carrier and a second positioning reference signal on a second component carrier from a second device in the communication network; and Jointly process the first positioning reference signal and the second positioning reference signal to generate a positioning measurement result in response to an oversampling indication indicating that oversampling is applied to the positioning reference signal.

63. A computer-readable medium, comprising instructions that, when executed by a device, cause the device to at least perform the following: Oversample a first positioning reference signal and a second positioning reference signal in response to an oversampling indication indicating that oversampling is applied to the positioning reference signal at a second device in a communication network; and Transmit the first positioning reference signal on the first component carrier to the first device in the communication network and transmit the second positioning reference signal transmitted to the first device on the second component carrier.

64. A computer-readable medium, comprising instructions that, when executed by a device, cause the device to at least perform the following: Send, from a location server in a communication network, an oversampling indication indicating that oversampling is applied to a positioning reference signal to at least one of a network device or a terminal device in the communication network.

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