Context-awareness is essential for many existing and emerging applications. Context information greatly relies on location information of people and things. But, navigation satellite systems are denied in indoor environments, current cellular systems fail to provide high-accuracy localization, other local localization technologies (e.g. WI-FI or BT) imply high deployment/maintenance/integration costs. Raw spatiotemporal data are not sufficient by themselves and need to be integrated with tools for the analysis of the behaviour of physical targets, to extract relevant feature of interests.

LOCUS will improve the functionality of 5G infrastructures to: i) provide accurate and ubiquitous location information as a network-native service and ii) derive more complex features and behavioural patterns out of raw location and physical events, and expose them to applications via simple interfaces. Localization, together with analytics, and their combined provision “as a service”, will greatly increase the overall value of the 5G ecosystem, allowing network operators to better manage their networks and to dramatically expand the range of offered applications and services.

The current freedom to act on 5G system design and availability of software network paradigms and AI techniques uniquely combine in this historical moment to make it possible to radically improve the future network by endowing it with accurate on-demand localization and analytics.

LOCUS will showcase its solutions in three scenarios: Smart Network Management based on Location Information of 5G equipment; Network-assisted Self-driving Objects; People Mobility & Flow Monitoring. The LOCUS consortium gathers a diverse blend of high-profile partners including Operators, Vendors, IT industries and SMEs that can make its vision a reality. LOCUS will be an enabler of a myriad of applications for the 5G ecosystem and beyond, boosting vertical industries and creating new business opportunities also for telcos.