What Will 5G Be
Summary (5 min read)
A. The Road to 5G
- In just the past year, preliminary interest and discussions about a possible 5G standard have evolved into a full-fledged conversation that has captured the attention and imagination of researchers and engineers around the world.
- Driven largely by smartphones, tablets, and video streaming, the most recent (Feb. 2014) VNI report [2] and forecast makes plain that an incremental approach will not come close to meeting the demands that networks will face by 2020.
- June 9, 2014 has been driven chiefly by video thus far, but new unforeseen applications can reasonably be expected to materialize by 2020, also known as Article last revised.
- The number of devices could reach the tens or even hundreds of billions by the time 5G comes to fruition, due to many new applications beyond personal communications [3]–[5].
B. Engineering Requirements for 5G
- The following items are requirements in each key dimension, but it should be stressed that not all of these need to be satisfied simultaneously.
- Very-high-rate applications such as streaming high-definition video may have relaxed latency and reliability requirements compared to driverless cars or public safety applications, where latency and reliability are paramount but lower data rates can be tolerated.
- Goals for the 5G edge rate range from 100 Mbps (easily enough to support high-definition streaming) to as much as 1 Gbps.
- As the authors move to 5G, costs and energy consumption will, ideally, decrease, but at least they should not increase on a per-link basis.
- The authors address backhaul and other economic considerations in Sect. IV-C.
C. Device Types and Quantities.
- With the expected rise of machine-to-machine communication, a single macrocell may need to support 10,000 or more low-rate devices along with its traditional high-rate mobile users.
- This will require wholesale changes to the control plane and network management relative to 4G, whose overhead channels and state machines are not designed for such a diverse and large subscriber base.
II. KEY TECHNOLOGIES TO GET TO 1000X DATA RATE
- I-B, certainly the one that gets the most attention is the need for radically higher data rates across the board.
- Increased bandwidth, primarily by moving towards and into mmWave spectrum but also by making better use of WiFi’s unlicensed spectrum in the 5-GHz band.
- The combination of more nodes per unit area and Hz, more Hz, and more bits/s/Hz per node, will compound into many more bits/s per unit area.
- Other ideas not in the above categories, e.g., interference management through BS cooperation [10]–[23] may also contribute improvements, but the lion’s share of the surge in capacity should come from ideas in the above categories.
- In the remainder of this section, these are distilled in some detail.
A. Extreme Densification and Offloading
- A straightforward but extremely effective way to increase the network capacity is to make the cells smaller.
- The authors define the BS densification gain ρ(λ1, λ2) as the effective increase in data rate relative to the increase in network density, which is a proxy here for cost.
- This raises all the small-cell SINRs considerably—enough to justify actually shutting down even congested macrocell BSs— while also providing a mechanism for the biased users to hear common control channels that would otherwise be swamped by the macrocells.
- In summary, there is a great deal of scope for modeling, analyzing and optimizing BS-user associations in 5G.
- Turning to end-user-deployed femtocells and WiFi access points, these are certainly much more cost-effective both from a capital and operating expense perspective [24].
B. Millimeter Wave
- Terrestrial wireless systems have largely restricted their operation to the relatively slim range of microwave frequencies that extends from several hundred MHz to a few GHz and corresponds to wavelengths in the range of a few centimeters up to about a meter.
- The main reason that mmWave spectrum lies idle is that, until recently, it had been deemed unsuitable for mobile communications because of rather hostile propagation qualities, including strong pathloss, atmospheric and rain absorption, low diffraction around obstacles and penetration through objects, and, further, because of strong phase noise and exorbitant equipment costs.
- If the electrical size of the antennas (i.e., their size measured by the wavelength λ = c/fc where fc is the carrier frequency) is kept constant, as the frequency increases the antennas shrink and their effective aperture scales with λ2 4π ; then, the free-space pathloss between a transmit and a receive antenna grows with f2c .
- While physically feasible, the notion of narrow-beam communication is new to cellular communications and poses difficulties, which the authors next discuss.
- A key challenge for narrow beams is the difficulty in establishing associations between users and BSs, both for initial access and for handoff.
C. Massive MIMO
- Stemming from research that blossomed in the late 1990s [87], [88], MIMO communication was introduced into WiFi systems around 2006 and into 3G cellular shortly thereafter.
- This interference, so-called “pilot contamination,” does not vanish as the number of BS antennas grows large, and so is the one impairment that remains asymptotically.
- 3) Full-Dimension MIMO and Elevation Beamforming: Existing BSs mostly feature linear horizontal arrays, which in tower structures can only accommodate a limited number of antennas, due to form factors, and which only exploit the azimuth angle dimension.
- The large number of excess antennas at massive MIMO BSs may offer the opportunity of spatial nulling and interference avoidance with relative simplicity and little penalty.
- To confirm the feasibility of this idea, put forth in [111] and further developed in [112] within this special issue, comprehensive channel models are again needed.
III. DESIGN ISSUES FOR 5G
- In addition to supporting 1000x higher data rates, 5G networks must decrease latencies, lower energy consumption, lower costs, and support many low-rate connections.
- The authors discuss important ongoing research areas that support these requirements.
- The authors begin with the most fundamental aspect of the physical layer—the waveform—and then consider the evolution of cloud-based and virtualized network architectures, latency and control signaling, and energy efficiency.
A. The Waveform: Signaling and Multiple Access
- The signaling and multiple access formats, i.e., the waveform design, have changed significantly at each cellular generation and to a large extent they have been each generation’s defining technical feature.
- Once the limitations of CDMA for high-speed data became inescapable, there was a discreet but unmistakable retreat back towards TDMA, with minimal spectrum spreading retained and with the important addition of channel-aware scheduling [115].
- Second, OFDM’s spectral efficiency is satisfactory, but could perhaps be further improved upon if the requirements of strict orthogonality were relaxed and if the cyclic prefixes (CPs) that prevent interblock interference were smaller or discarded.
- Single-carrier transmission has also been attracting renewed interest, chiefly due to the development of low-complexity nonlinear equalizers implemented in the frequency domain [131].
- The authors conclude with their own opinion that OFDM could be well adapted to different 5G requirements by allowing some of its parameters to be tunable, rather than designed for essentially the worst-case multipath delay spread.
B. Cloud-based Networking
- For the sake of completeness the authors briefly touch on the exciting changes taking place at the network level.
- In fact, the term cloud-RAN is already being utilized, but for now largely to refer to schemes whereby multiple BSs are allowed to cooperate [132].
- Furthermore, this new architecture will allow for significant nimbleness through the creation of virtual networks and of new types of network services [134].
- Advances in computing technology have reached a level where this vision can become a reality, with the ensuring architecture having recently been termed software defined networking (SDN).
C. Energy efficiency
- As specified in their stated requirements for 5G, the energy efficiency of the communication chain—typically measured in either Joules/bit or bits/Joule—will need to improve by about the same amount as the data rate just to maintain the power consumption.
- This implies a several-order-of-magnitude increase in energy efficiency, which is extremely challenging.
- Research has focused on the following areas.
- The underlying philosophy of these papers is that, since networks have been designed to meet peak-hour traffic, energy can be saved by switching off BSs when they have no active users or simply very low traffic.
- In summary, energy efficiency will be a major research theme for 5G, spanning many of the other topics in this article: True cloud-RAN could provide an additional opportunity for energy efficiency since the centralization of the baseband processing might save energy [160], especially if advances on green data centers are leveraged [161]. .
A. Spectrum Policy and Allocation
- As discussed in Section II-B, the beachfront microwave spectrum is already saturated in peak markets at peak times while large amounts of idle spectrum do exist in the mmWave realm.
- There are claims that spectrum markets have thus far not been successful in providing efficient allocations because such markets are not sufficiently fluid due to the high cost of the infrastructure [165].
- At the other extreme, regulators can designate a band to be “open access”, meaning that there is no spectrum license and thus users can share the band provided their devices are certified (by class licenses).
- An operator might have an incentive to increase prices so that some traffic is diverted to the unlicensed band, where the cost of interference is shared with other operators, and this price increase more than offsets the operator’s benefits.
B. Regulation and Standardization
- Several regional forums and projects have been established to shape the 5G vision and to study its key enabling technologies [6], [172]–[174], also known as 1) 5G Standardization Status.
- The aforementioned EU project METIS has already released documents on scenarios and requirements [175], [176].
- The timing of 5G standardization has not even been agreed upon, although it is not expected to start until later Rel-14 or Rel-15, likely around 2016–2017.
- These processes tend to be tedious and lengthy, and there are many hurdles to clear before the spectrum can indeed be available.
- In the USA, the technological advisory council of the federal communications committee (FCC) has carried out extensive investigations on mmWave technology in the last few years and it is possible that FCC will issue a notice of inquiry in 2014, which is always the first step in FCC’s rulemaking process for allocation of any new frequency bands.
C. Economic Considerations
- Even if spectrum costs can be greatly reduced through the approaches discussed above, it is still a major challenge for carriers to densify their networks to the extent needed to meet their stated 5G requirements.
- The small cell may provide coverage to an enterprise or business such that, when a user leaves the enterprise, it roams onto the other operator’s network.
- It is shown in [182] that sharing increases investment, and the incentive is greater if the owner of the infrastructure gets the larger fraction of the revenue when overflow traffic is carried.
- The authors find optimism in three directions.
- Wireless backhaul solutions are improving by leaps and bounds, with considerable startup activity driving innovation and competition.
V. CONCLUSIONS
- Daunting new requirements for 5G are already unleashing a flurry of creative thinking and a sense of urgency in bringing innovative new technologies into reality.
- Even just two years ago, a mmWave cellular system was considered something of a fantasy; now it is almost considered an inevitability.
- Many technical challenges remain spanning all layers of the protocol stack and their implementation, as well as many intersections with regulatory, policy, and business considerations.
- The authors hope that this article and those in this special issue will help to move us forward along this road.
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Citations
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Cites background from "What Will 5G Be"
...Large antenna arrays are capable to steer the beam energy and collect it coherently [7]....
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...and academia, eight major requirements [7], [10], [11] of next generation 5G systems are identified as: 1) 1 ∼ 10 Gbps data rates in real networks: This is almost...
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...hyper-connected vision and new application-specific requirements is going to trigger the next major evolution in wireless communications - the 5G (fifth generation) [7], [10], [11]....
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...FBMC is natively non-orthogonal and do not require complex synchronization [7]....
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...Propagation characteristics of mm-waves are a little less conducive for wireless communication, as compared to current “beach-front spectrum” [7]....
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Cites background or methods from "What Will 5G Be"
...Cognitive radio (CR) [1, 2] has emerged as an intelligent radio communications system that is capable of learning its surrounding context and reconfiguring its operating parameters adapted to the time-varying environment....
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...The opportunity to carry out such more conceptual research, which would be less subject to constraints and practicalities, led Joseph Mitola to define the founding concepts of software radio3 [1, 2]....
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...[1] JTRS Standards, “Software Communications Architecture Specification,” v....
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...1, the reconfigurable MD is a generic concept based on technologies such as SDR and cognitive radio (CR) with a system that exploits the capabilities of reconfigurable radio and networks for self-adaptation to a dynamically changing environment with the aim of improving the supply chain, equipment, and spectrum utilization [1]....
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...Software radio [1] is the most recent major technological change in the field....
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2,289 citations
Cites background from "What Will 5G Be"
...In particular, the breakthroughs in small-cell networks, multi-antenna, and millimeter-wave communications promise to provide users gigabit wireless access in next-generation systems [9]....
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References
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"What Will 5G Be" refers background in this paper
...This interference, so-called “pilot contamination,” does not vanish as the number of BS antennas grows large, and so is the one impairment that remains asymptotically....
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Frequently Asked Questions (14)
Q2. What is the case scenario for a cellular network?
In an interference-limited network with full buffers, the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) is essentially equal to the SIR and, because the SIR distribution remains approximately constant as the network densifies, the best case scenario is ρ ≈
Q3. What is the main reason for the need for massive MIMO?
As networks become dense and more traffic is offloaded to small cells, the number of active users per cell will diminish and the need for massive MIMO may decrease.
Q4. What is the important feature of cellular networks relative to WiFi?
Although a hefty share of data is served to stationary indoor users, the support of mobility and alwayson connectivity is arguably the single most important feature of cellular networks relative to WiFi.
Q5. How many BSs can be as small as two hundred meters?
In Japan, for instance, the spacing between BSs can be as small as two hundred meters, giving a coverage area well under a tenth of a square km.
Q6. What is the effect of unlicensed spectrum on the overall social welfare of the users?
while unlicensed spectrum generally lowers barriers to entry and increases competition, the opposite could occur and in some circumstances a single monopoly operator could emerge [171] within the unlicensed bands.
Q7. What are the main issues still open in terms of scalability, migration from current structures?
From a wireless core network point of view, NFV and SDN should be viewed as tools for provisioning the next generation of core networks with many issues still open in terms of scalability, migration from current structures, management and automation, and security.
Q8. Why is the access network the largest share of the energy?
Due to the rapidly increasing network density (cf. Sect. II-A), the access network consumes the largest share of the energy [142].
Q9. How many exabytes of data will be handled by wireless networks by 2020?
In just a decade, the amount of IP data handled by wireless networks will have increased by well over a factor of 100: from under 3 exabytes in 2010 to over 190 exabytes by 2018, on pace to exceed 500 exabytes by 2020.
Q10. What is the pairing for MIMO?
An excellent pairing for MIMO, since OFDM allows forthe spatial interference from multiantenna transmission to be dealt with at a subcarrier level, without the added complication of intersymbol interference.
Q11. What is the way to allocate spectrum?
4) Market-Based Approaches to Spectrum Allocation: Given the advantages of exclusive licenses for ensuring quality of service, it is likely that most beachfront spectrum will continue to be allocated that way.
Q12. What are the two regulatory frameworks that allow spectrum sharing?
Authorized Shared Access [166] and Licensed Shared Access [167] are regulatory frameworks that allow spectrum sharing by a limited number of parties each having a license under carefully specified conditions.
Q13. Why is it difficult to model and analyze the effect of mobility on network performance?
Because modeling and analyzing the effect of mobility on network performance is difficult, the authors expect to see somewhat ad hoc solutions such as in LTE Rel-11 [51] where user-specific virtual cells are defined to distinguish the physical cell from a broader area where the user can roam without the need for handoff, communicating with any BS or subset of BSs in that area.
Q14. What is the main argument for allowing some of the parameters to be tunable?
The authors conclude with their own opinion that OFDM could be well adapted to different 5G requirements by allowing some of its parameters to be tunable, rather than designed for essentially the worst-case multipath delay spread.