LOCUS: Localization and analytics on-demand embedded in the 5G ecosystem

Location information and context-awareness are essential for a variety of existing and emerging 5G-based applications. Nevertheless, navigation satellite systems are denied in indoor environments, current cellular systems fail to provide high-accuracy localization, and other local localization technologies (e.g., Wi-Fi or Bluetooth) imply high deployment, maintenance and integration costs. Raw spatiotemporal data are not sufficient by themselves and need to be integrated with tools for the analysis of the behavior of physical targets, to extract relevant features of interests. In this paper, we present LOCUS, an H2020 project (https://www.locus-project.eu/) funded by the European Commission, aiming at the design and implementation of an innovative location management layered platform which will be able to: i) improve localization accuracy, close to theoretical bounds, as well as localization security and privacy, ii) extend localization with physical analytics, iii) extract value out from the combined interaction of localization and analytics, while guaranteeing users' privacy.