The vision of next generation 5G wireless communications lies in providing very high data rates (typically of Gbps order), extremely low latency, manifold increase in base station capacity, and significant improvement in users’ perceived quality of service (QoS), compared to current 4G LTE networks. Ever increasing proliferation of smart devices, introduction of new emerging multimedia applications, together with an exponential rise in wireless data (multimedia) demand and usage is already creating a significant burden on existing cellular networks. 5G wireless systems, with improved data rates, capacity, latency, and QoS are expected to be the panacea of most of the current cellular networks’ problems. In this survey, we make an exhaustive review of wireless evolution toward 5G networks. We first discuss the new architectural changes associated with the radio access network (RAN) design, including air interfaces, smart antennas, cloud and heterogeneous RAN. Subsequently, we make an in-depth survey of underlying novel mm-wave physical layer technologies, encompassing new channel model estimation, directional antenna design, beamforming algorithms, and massive MIMO technologies. Next, the details of MAC layer protocols and multiplexing schemes needed to efficiently support this new physical layer are discussed. We also look into the killer applications, considered as the major driving force behind 5G. In order to understand the improved user experience, we provide highlights of new QoS, QoE, and SON features associated with the 5G evolution. For alleviating the increased network energy consumption and operating expenditure, we make a detail review on energy awareness and cost efficiency. As understanding the current status of 5G implementation is important for its eventual commercialization, we also discuss relevant field trials, drive tests, and simulation experiments. Finally, we point out major existing research issues and identify possible future research directions.

Next Generation 5G Wireless Networks: A Comprehensive Survey

The increasing demand of mobile Internet and the Internet of Things poses challenging requirements for 5G wireless communications, such as high spectral efficiency and massive connectivity. In this article, a promising technology, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), is discussed, which can address some of these challenges for 5G. Different from conventional orthogonal multiple access technologies, NOMA can accommodate much more users via nonorthogonal resource allocation. We divide existing dominant NOMA schemes into two categories: power-domain multiplexing and code-domain multiplexing, and the corresponding schemes include power-domain NOMA, multiple access with low-density spreading, sparse code multiple access, multi-user shared access, pattern division multiple access, and so on. We discuss their principles, key features, and pros/cons, and then provide a comprehensive comparison of these solutions from the perspective of spectral efficiency, system performance, receiver complexity, and so on. In addition, challenges, opportunities, and future research trends for NOMA design are highlighted to provide some insight on the potential future work for researchers in this field. Finally, to leverage different multiple access schemes including both conventional OMA and new NOMA, we propose the concept of software defined multiple access (SoDeMA), which enables adaptive configuration of available multiple access schemes to support diverse services and applications in future 5G networks.

Non-orthogonal multiple access for 5G: solutions, challenges, opportunities, and future research trends

There is considerable pressure to define the key requirements of 5G, develop 5G standards, and perform technology trials as quickly as possible. Normally, these activities are best done in series but there is a desire to complete these tasks in parallel so that commercial deployments of 5G can begin by 2020. 5G will not be an incremental improvement over its predecessors; it aims to be a revolutionary leap forward in terms of data rates, latency, massive connectivity, network reliability, and energy efficiency. These capabilities are targeted at realizing high-speed connectivity, the Internet of Things, augmented virtual reality, the tactile internet, and so on. The requirements of 5G are expected to be met by new spectrum in the microwave bands (3.3-4.2 GHz), and utilizing large bandwidths available in mm-wave bands, increasing spatial degrees of freedom via large antenna arrays and 3-D MIMO, network densification, and new waveforms that provide scalability and flexibility to meet the varying demands of 5G services. Unlike the one size fits all 4G core networks, the 5G core network must be flexible and adaptable and is expected to simultaneously provide optimized support for the diverse 5G use case categories. In this paper, we provide an overview of 5G research, standardization trials, and deployment challenges. Due to the enormous scope of 5G systems, it is necessary to provide some direction in a tutorial article, and in this overview, the focus is largely user centric, rather than device centric. In addition to surveying the state of play in the area, we identify leading technologies, evaluating their strengths and weaknesses, and outline the key challenges ahead, with research test beds delivering promising performance but pre-commercial trials lagging behind the desired 5G targets.

5G : A tutorial overview of standards, trials, challenges, deployment, and practice

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is an essential enabling technology for the fifth-generation (5G) wireless networks to meet the heterogeneous demands on low latency, high reliability, massive connectivity, improved fairness, and high throughput. The key idea behind NOMA is to serve multiple users in the same resource block, such as a time slot, subcarrier, or spreading code. The NOMA principle is a general framework, and several recently proposed 5G multiple access schemes can be viewed as special cases. This survey provides an overview of the latest NOMA research and innovations as well as their applications. Thereby, the papers published in this special issue are put into the context of the existing literature. Future research challenges regarding NOMA in 5G and beyond are also discussed.

A Survey on Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access for 5G Networks: Research Challenges and Future Trends

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is one of the promising radio access techniques for performance enhancement in next-generation cellular communications. Compared to orthogonal frequency division multiple access, which is a well-known high-capacity orthogonal multiple access technique, NOMA offers a set of desirable benefits, including greater spectrum efficiency. There are different types of NOMA techniques, including power-domain and code-domain. This paper primarily focuses on power-domain NOMA that utilizes superposition coding at the transmitter and successive interference cancellation at the receiver. Various researchers have demonstrated that NOMA can be used effectively to meet both network-level and user-experienced data rate requirements of fifth-generation (5G) technologies. From that perspective, this paper comprehensively surveys the recent progress of NOMA in 5G systems, reviewing the state-of-the-art capacity analysis, power allocation strategies, user fairness, and user-pairing schemes in NOMA. In addition, this paper discusses how NOMA performs when it is integrated with various proven wireless communications techniques, such as cooperative communications, multiple-input multiple-output, beamforming, space-time coding, and network coding among others. Furthermore, this paper discusses several important issues on NOMA implementation and provides some avenues for future research.

Power-Domain Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) in 5G Systems: Potentials and Challenges

Multicarrier CDMA is a multiplexing approach in which modulated QAM symbols are spread over multiple OFDMA tones by using a generally complex spreading sequence. Effectively, a QAM symbol is repeated over multiple tones. Low density signature (LDS) is a version of CDMA with low density spreading sequence allowing us to take advantage of a near optimal ML receiver with practically feasible complexity. In this paper, we propose a new multiple access scheme so called sparse code multiple access (SCMA) which still enjoys the low complexity reception technique but with better performance compared to LDS. In SCMA, the procedure of bit to QAM symbol mapping and spreading are combined together and incoming bits are directly mapped to a multidimensional codeword of an SCMA codebook set. Each layer or user has its dedicated codebook. Shaping gain of a multidimensional constellation is the main source of the performance improvement in comparison to the simple repetition of QAM symbols in LDS. In general, SCMA codebook design is an optimization problem. A systematic sub-optimal approach is proposed here for SCMA codebook design.

Sparse code multiple access

Multicarrier CDMA is a multiple access scheme in which modulated QAM symbols are spread over OFDMA tones by using a generally complex spreading sequence. Effectively, a QAM symbol is repeated over multiple tones. Low density signature (LDS) is a version of CDMA with low density spreading sequences allowing us to take advantage of a near optimal message passing algorithm (MPA) receiver with practically feasible complexity. Sparse code multiple access (SCMA) is a multi-dimensional codebook-based non-orthogonal spreading technique. In SCMA, the procedure of bit to QAM symbol mapping and spreading are combined together and incoming bits are directly mapped to multi-dimensional codewords of SCMA codebook sets. Each layer has its dedicated codebook. Shaping gain of a multi-dimensional constellation is one of the main sources of the performance improvement in comparison to the simple repetition of QAM symbols in LDS. Meanwhile, like LDS, SCMA enjoys the low complexity reception techniques due to the sparsity of SCMA codewords. In this paper a systematic approach is proposed to design SCMA codebooks mainly based on the design principles of lattice constellations. Simulation results are presented to show the performance gain of SCMA compared to LDS and OFDMA.

SCMA Codebook Design

We consider the interference management problem in a multicell MIMO heterogeneous network. Within each cell there is a large number of distributed micro/pico base stations (BSs) that can be potentially coordinated for joint transmission. To reduce coordination overhead, we consider user-centric BS clustering so that each user is served by only a small number of (potentially overlapping) BSs. Thus, given the channel state information, our objective is to jointly design the BS clustering and the linear beamformers for all BSs in the network. In this paper, we formulate this problem from a {sparse optimization} perspective, and propose an efficient algorithm that is based on iteratively solving a sequence of group LASSO problems. A novel feature of the proposed algorithm is that it performs BS clustering and beamformer design jointly rather than separately as is done in the existing approaches for partial coordinated transmission. Moreover, the cluster size can be controlled by adjusting a single penalty parameter in the nonsmooth regularized utility function. The convergence of the proposed algorithm (to a stationary solution) is guaranteed, and its effectiveness is demonstrated via extensive simulation.

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Joint Base Station Clustering and Beamformer Design for Partial Coordinated Transmission in Heterogeneous Networks

Sparse code multiple access (SCMA) is a new frequency domain non-orthogonal multiple-access technique which can improve spectral efficiency of wireless radio access. With SCMA, different incoming data streams are directly mapped to codewords of different multi-dimensional cookbooks, where each codeword represents a spread transmission layer. Multiple SCMA layers share the same time-frequency resources of OFDMA. The sparsity of codewords makes the near-optimal detection feasible through iterative message passing algorithm (MPA). Such low complexity of multi-layer detection allows excessive codeword overloading in which the dimension of multiplexed layers exceeds the dimension of codewords. Optimization of overloading factor along with modulation-coding levels of layers provides a more flexible and efficient link-adaptation mechanism. On the other hand, the signal spreading feature of SCMA can improve link-adaptation as a result of less colored interference. In this paper a technique is developed to enable multi-user SCMA (MU-SCMA) for downlink wireless access. User pairing, power sharing, rate adjustment, and scheduling algorithms are designed to improve the downlink throughput of a heavily loaded network. The advantage of SCMA spreading for lightly loaded networks is also evaluated.

SCMA for downlink multiple access of 5G wireless networks

Sparse code multiple access (SCMA) is a new frequency domain non-orthogonal multiple-access technique which can enable massive connectivity and grant-free transmission in wireless radio access. With SCMA, different incoming data streams are directly mapped to codewords of different multi-dimensional cookbooks, where each codeword represents a spread transmission layer. Multiple SCMA layers share the same time-frequency resources of OFDMA. The sparsity of codewords allows low complexity of multi-layer detection for excessive codeword overloading which is the key feature to enable massive connectivity. In this paper, a blind detection solution is introduced and analyzed to support massive connectivity in a SCMA-based UL grant-free multiple access. The proposed solution is based on two major components: i) blind detection of active pilots/users with reasonable complexity, and ii) blind decoding of active users' data with no knowledge of active codebook set. Different activity detection algorithms and schemes are proposed, described, and analyzed. Simulation results are provided to evaluate the performance of the proposed schemes in various scenarios. Our analysis and performance evaluation confirm the proposed SCMA-based blind reception solution is a promising technology to enable massive connectivity for grant-free multiple-access transmission mode in future wireless networks.

Hadi Baligh

Papers

Sparse code multiple access

SCMA Codebook Design

Joint Base Station Clustering and Beamformer Design for Partial Coordinated Transmission in Heterogeneous Networks

SCMA for downlink multiple access of 5G wireless networks

Blind detection of SCMA for uplink grant-free multiple-access