  The fifth generation (5G) mobile networks with enhanced connectivity and
positioning capabilities play an increasingly important role in the development
of autonomous and other advanced industrial systems. In this article, we
address the prospects of 5G New Radio (NR) sidelink based ad-hoc networks and
their applicability for increasing the situational awareness, in terms of
continuous tracking of moving connected machines and vehicles, in industrial
systems. For increased system flexibility and fast deployments, we assume that
the locations of the so-called anchor nodes are unknown, and describe an
extended Kalman filter-based joint positioning and tracking framework in which
the locations of both the anchor nodes and the target nodes can be estimated
simultaneously. We assess and demonstrate the achievable 3D positioning and
tracking performance in the context of a realistic industrial warehouse
facility, through extensive ray-tracing based evaluations at the 26 GHz NR
band. Our findings show that when both angle-based and time-based measurements
are utilized, reaching sub-1 meter accuracy is realistic and that the system is
also relatively robust against different node geometries. Finally, several
research challenges towards achieving robust, high-performance and
cost-efficient positioning solutions are outlined and discussed, identifying
various potential directions for future work.
