Five disruptive technology directions for 5G
Summary (2 min read)
INTRODUCTION
- The fifth generation (5G) cellular network is coming.
- This article focuses on potential disruptive technologies and their implications for 5G.
- Disruptive changes that have an impact at both the node and architecture levels.
- Such a spectrum “el Dorado” has led to an mmWave “gold rush” in which researchers with diverse backgrounds are studying different aspects of mmWave transmission.
- Massive MIMO may require major architectural changes, particularly in the design of macro base stations, and it may also lead to new types of deployments.
DEVICE-CENTRIC ARCHITECTURES
- Cellular designs have historically relied on the axiomatic role of “cells” as fundamental units within the radio access network.
- Network densification could require some major changes in 5G.
- The deployment of base stations with vastly different transmit powers and coverage areas, for instance, calls for a decoupling of downlink and uplink in a way that allows the corresponding information to flow through different sets of nodes [5].
- In other words, the set of network nodes providing connectivity to a given device and the functions of these nodes in a particular communication session should be tailored to that specific device and session.
- While the need for a disruptive change in architectural design appears clear, major research efforts are still needed to transform the resulting vision into a coherent and realistic proposition.
MILLIMETER WAVE COMMUNICATION
- Microwave cellular systems have precious little spectrum: around 600 MHz are currently in use, divided among operators [10].
- There are two ways to gain access to more microwave spectrum: To repurpose or refarm spectrum.
- A main difference between microwave and mmWave frequencies is the sensitivity to blockages: the results in [11], for instance, indicate a path loss exponent of 2 for line-of-sight propagation but 4 (plus additional power loss) for nonline-of-sight.
- Adaptive arrays with narrow beams also reduce the impact of interference, meaning that mmWave systems could more often operate in noise-limited rather than interference-limited conditions.
- One alternative is a hybrid architecture where beamforming is performed in analog at RF, and multiple sets of beamformers are connected to a small number of ADCs or DACS; in this alternative, signal processing algorithms are needed to steer the analog beamforming weights.
MASSIVE MIMO
- Massive MIMO (also referred to as “Large-Scale MIMO” or “Large-Scale Antenna Systems”) is a form of multiuser MIMO in which the number of antennas at the base station is much larger than the number of devices per signaling resource [14].
- While very promising, massive MIMO still presents a number of research challenges.
- The authors focus on three different examples of technologies that could be incorporated into smarter devices: D2D, local caching, and advanced interference rejection.
D2D
- In voice-centric systems it was implicitly accepted that two parties willing to establish a call would not be in close proximity.
- In the age of data, this premise might no longer hold, and it could be common to have situations where several co-located devices would like to wirelessly share content (e.g., digital pictures) or interact (e.g., video gaming or social networking).
- Transmit powers of a fraction of a Watt (in the uplink) and several Watts (in the downlink) are consumed to achieve what requires, fundamentally, a few milliWatts.
- While it is clear that D2D has the potential to handle local communication more efficiently, local high-data-rate exchanges could also be handled by other radio access technologies such as Bluetooth or WiFi direct.
LOCAL CACHING
- The current paradigm of cloud computing is the result of a progressive shift in the balance between data storage and data transfer: information is stored and processed wherever it is most convenient and inexpensive because the marginal cost of transferring it has become negligible, at least on wireline networks [2].
- Thinking ahead, it is easy to envision mobile devices with truly vast amounts of memory.
- The authors hence see local caching as an important alternative, at both the radio access network edge (e.g., at small cells) and mobile devices, also thanks to enablers such as mmWave and D2D.
- In some instances, the 4 Low-latency local communications are discussed also in the next section.
- IEEE Communications Magazine February 2014 79 devices might accommodate several antennas with the consequent opportunity for active interference rejection therein, along with beamforming and spatial multiplexing.
M2M COMMUNICATION
- Wireless communication is becoming a commodity, just like electricity or water [13].
- Regions R3 and R4 correspond to the emerging services discussed in this section: R3 refers to massive M2M communication where each connected machine or sensor transmits small data blocks sporadically.
- A current system could easily serve 5 devices at 2 Mb/s each, but not 10,000 devices each requiring 1 kb/s. R4 demarks the operation of systems that require high reliability and/or low latency, but with a relatively low average rate per device.
- Results are given in terms of gain (%) w.r.t. the single-base single-antenna baseline.
- From the discussion above, and from the related architectural consideration earlier, and referring one last time to the Henderson-Clark model, the authors conclude that native support of M2M in 5G requires radical changes at both the node and architecture levels.
CONCLUSION
- This article has discussed five disruptive research directions that could lead to fundamental changes in the design of cellular networks.
- The authors have focused on technologies that could lead to both architectural and component design changes: device-centric architectures, mmWave, massive MIMO, smarter devices, and native support of M2M.
Did you find this useful? Give us your feedback
Citations
[...]
7,139 citations
3,045 citations
2,624 citations
2,512 citations
2,452 citations
References
9,073 citations
6,708 citations
6,248 citations
2,487 citations
952 citations
Related Papers (5)
Frequently Asked Questions (14)
Q2. What is the main goal of mwave cellular research?
MmWave cellular research will need to incorporate sensitivity to blockages and more complex channel models in the analysis, and also study the effects of enablers such as higher density infrastructure and relays.
Q3. What are the main challenges for D2D?
In particular, the authors envision D2D as an important enabler for applications requiring low latency,4 especially in future network deployments utilizing baseband centralization and radio virtualization.
Q4. What is the main idea behind the concept of a centralized baseband?
The deployment of base stations with vastly different transmit powers and coverage areas, for instance, calls for a decoupling of downlink and uplink in a way that allows the corresponding information to flow through different sets of nodes [5].
Q5. What is the main idea behind local caching?
The authors hence see local caching as an important alternative, at both the radio access network edge (e.g., at small cells) and mobile devices, also thanks to enablers such as mmWave and D2D.
Q6. What is the typical example of a vehicle-to-X connectivity?
A typical example is vehicle-to-X connectivity, whereby traffic safety can be improved through the timely delivery of critical messages (e.g., alert and control).
Q7. What is the way to use 5G?
several tens of gigahertz could become available for 5G, offering well over an order of magnitude increase over what is available at present.
Q8. What is the axiomatic role of a cell in a design postulate?
Under such a design postulate, a device obtains service by establishing a downlink and an uplink connection, carrying both control and data traffic, with the base station commanding the cell where the device is located.
Q9. What are the three examples of technologies that could be incorporated into smarter devices?
The authors focus on three different examples of technologies that could be incorporated into smarter devices: D2D, local caching, and advanced interference rejection.
Q10. How many connected devices do M2M services require?
Whereas current systems typically operate with, at most, a few hundred devices per base station, some M2M services might require over 104 connected devices.
Q11. What is the effect of the law of large numbers on the channel?
The favorable action of the law of large numbers smoothens out frequency dependencies in the channel and, altogether, huge gains in spectral efficiency can be attained (Fig. 4).
Q12. What is the importance of a reliable wireless link?
As these systems transition from wireline to wireless, it becomes necessary for the wireless link to be reliably operational virtually all the time.
Q13. What are the challenges in analyzing different transceiver strategies?
There are abundant research challenges in optimizing different transceiver strategies, analyzing their capacity, incorporating multiuser capabilities, and leveraging channel features such as sparsity.
Q14. How can a massive MIMO solution be implemented?
From an implementation perspective, massive MIMO can potentially be realized with modular low-cost low-power hardware with each antenna functioning semiautonomously, but a considerable development effort is still required to demonstrate the cost effectiveness of this solution.