Providing ubiquitous connectivity to diverse device types is the key challenge for 5G and beyond 5G (B5G). Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are expected to be an important component of the upcoming wireless networks that can potentially facilitate wireless broadcast and support high rate transmissions. Compared to the communications with fixed infrastructure, UAV has salient attributes, such as flexible deployment, strong line-of-sight (LoS) connection links, and additional design degrees of freedom with the controlled mobility. In this paper, a comprehensive survey on UAV communication towards 5G/B5G wireless networks is presented. We first briefly introduce essential background and the space-air-ground integrated networks, as well as discuss related research challenges faced by the emerging integrated network architecture. We then provide an exhaustive review of various 5G techniques based on UAV platforms, which we categorize by different domains including physical layer, network layer, and joint communication, computing and caching. In addition, a great number of open research problems are outlined and identified as possible future research directions.

UAV Communications for 5G and Beyond: Recent Advances and Future Trends

In this article we introduce Simu5G, a new OMNeT++-based model library to simulate 5G networks. Simu5G allows users to simulate the data plane of 5G New Radio deployments, in an end-to-end perspective and including all protocol layers, making it a valuable tool for researchers and practitioners interested in the performance evaluation of 5G networks and services. We discuss the modelling of the protocol layers, network entities and functions, and validate our abstraction of the physical layer using 3GPP-based scenarios. Moreover, we show how Simu5G can be used to evaluate Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) and Cellular Vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) services offered through a 5G network.

/pdf/simu5g-an-omnet-library-for-end-to-end-performance-4wmb1vc3tb.pdf

Simu5G–An OMNeT++ Library for End-to-End Performance Evaluation of 5G Networks

Narrowband Internet of Things: A Comprehensive Study

The upcoming Internet of Things will introduce large sensor networks including devices with very different propagation characteristics and power consumption demands. 5G aims to fulfill these requirements by demanding a battery lifetime of at least 10 years. To integrate smart devices that are located in challenging propagation conditions, IoT communication technologies furthermore have to support very deep coverage. NB-IoT and eMTC are designed to meet these requirements and thus paving the way to 5G. With the power saving options extended Discontinuous Reception and Power Saving Mode as well as the usage of large numbers of repetitions, NB-IoT and eMTC introduce new techniques to meet the 5G IoT requirements. In this paper, the performance of NB-IoT and eMTC is evaluated. Therefore, data rate, power consumption, latency and spectral efficiency are examined in different coverage conditions. Although both technologies use the same power saving techniques as well as repetitions to extend the communication range, the analysis reveals a different performance in the context of data size, rate and coupling loss. While eMTC comes with a 4% better battery lifetime than NB-IoT when considering 144 dB coupling loss, NB-IoT battery lifetime raises to 18% better performance in 164 dB coupling loss scenarios. The overall analysis shows that in coverage areas with a coupling loss of 155 dB or less, eMTC performs better, but requires much more bandwidth. Taking the spectral efficiency into account, NB-IoT is in all evaluated scenarios the better choice and more suitable for future networks with massive numbers of devices.

Power Consumption Analysis of NB-IoT and eMTC in Challenging Smart City Environments

Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is a type of low-power wide-area (LPWA) technology standardized by the 3rd-Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and based on long-term evolution (LTE) functionalities. NB-IoT has attracted significant interest from the research community due to its support for massive machine-type communication (mMTC) and various IoT use cases that have stringent specifications in terms of connectivity, energy efficiency, reachability, reliability, and latency. However, as the capacity requirements for different IoT use cases continue to grow, the various functionalities of the LTE evolved packet core (EPC) system may become overladen and inevitably suboptimal. Several research efforts are ongoing to meet these challenges; consequently, we present an overview of these efforts, mainly focusing on the Open System Interconnection (OSI) layer of the NB-IoT framework. We present an optimized architecture of the LTE EPC functionalities, as well as further discussion about the 3GPP NB-IoT standardization and its releases. Furthermore, the possible 5G architectural design for NB-IoT integration, the enabling technologies required for 5G NB-IoT, the 5G NR coexistence with NB-IoT, and the potential architectural deployment schemes of NB-IoT with cellular networks are introduced. In this article, a description of cloud-assisted relay with backscatter communication, a comprehensive review of the technical performance properties and channel communication characteristics from the perspective of the physical (PHY) and medium-access control (MAC) layer of NB-IoT, with a focus on 5G, are presented. The different limitations associated with simulating these systems are also discussed. The enabling market for NB-IoT, the benefits for a few use cases, and possible critical challenges related to their deployment are also included. Finally, present challenges and open research directions on the PHY and MAC properties, as well as the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis of NB-IoT, are presented to foster the prospective research activities.

/pdf/building-upon-nb-iot-networks-a-roadmap-towards-5g-new-radio-5ggj6pzgxl.pdf

Building Upon NB-IoT Networks: A Roadmap Towards 5G New Radio Networks

5G-air-simulator: An open-source tool modeling the 5G air interface

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (mMIMO) is emerging as a cornerstone technology for fifth-generation (5G) communications. It promises to scale up the performance of the conventional communication systems by growing the number of antennas at the base station side. This paper proposes a decentralized, scalable, and energy-efficient radio resource allocation method tailored for the uplink of the upcoming 5G air interface, based on the mMIMO physical layer. The proposed solution elaborates on a game-theoretical approach, which aims at maximizing the energy efficiency of mobile terminals, while guaranteeing the respect of average data rates and power consumptions constraints. This formulation leads to a low-complexity, iterative, and distributed algorithm, which considers (just to mention few relevant issues) the impact of channel time selectivity, delayed feedback from the base station, and physical-layer details of the selected communication technology. An extensive simulation campaign, considering a long-term evolution-advanced-based multicellular system based on mMIMO, is used to evaluate the benefits of the proposed technique. By calculating energy efficiency, user and peak data rates, spectral efficiency, outage probability, and other minor performance indexes, the reported results clearly demonstrate the performance gain that the designed solution offers with respect to baseline strategies.

Uplink Resource Management in 5G: When a Distributed and Energy-Efficient Solution Meets Power and QoS Constraints

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/itl2.3

Alessandro Grassi

Papers

5G-air-simulator: An open-source tool modeling the 5G air interface

Uplink Resource Management in 5G: When a Distributed and Energy-Efficient Solution Meets Power and QoS Constraints

A look at random access for machine-type communications in 5th generation cellular networks

Massive MIMO interference coordination for 5G broadband access: Integration and system level study

Understanding the 5G-air-simulator: A tutorial on design criteria, technical components, and reference use cases