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arXiv · 2609.25941

UE-Side Location Privacy for 5G NR Uplink Positioning: Mechanisms and Trade-offs

Giulia Focarelli·Alireza Pourafzal·Henk Wymeersch·Stefania Bartoletti
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Abstract

Future 5G-Advanced and 6G networks increasingly reuse uplink communication waveforms for positioning and sensing. This raises privacy concerns, as user equipments (UEs) may unintentionally reveal precise timing information even when positioning services are not explicitly requested. While prior works show generic orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) pilots can be manipulated to degrade time-of-arrival (ToA) estimation without compromising data links, this paper extends these concepts to a realistic 5G new radio (NR) up-link framework including Sounding Reference Signal (SRS), Demodulation Reference Signal (DMRS), Physical Uplink Shared Channel (PUSCH), and standardized 3GPP channel models. We investigate several UE-side privacy mechanisms: optimized pilot distortion, artificial noise, artificial multipath, and delay spoofing. Through 3GPP-compliant sample-level simulations, we assess their impact via localization, communication, and consistency-based detection metrics. The resulting analysis highlights the trade-offs among privacy, communication reliability, and detectability, providing key insights into waveform-level obfuscation for future integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) systems.

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Giulia Focarelli, Alireza Pourafzal, Henk Wymeersch, Stefania Bartoletti. 2026-09-22. UE-Side Location Privacy for 5G NR Uplink Positioning: Mechanisms and Trade-offs. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.25941

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