Conclusion

This book has introduced the requirements for the next generation of mobile cellular
systems and the challenges to rolling out such systems. We started with an overview of
the evolution of cellular systems, detailing how 2G, 3G, and 4G wireless communication
were designed for person-to-person communication, improving speed and efficiency
with every new generation. Following that introduction, we then discussed why 5G will be
different—in terms of implementation challenges and novel enablers of 5G, like network
densification, millimeter wave technology, machine-type communications, device-to-
device communications, and virtualization techniques. This new framework will finally
lead to billions of connected devices that are projected to be deployed in the mid- and
long-term while maintaining and even increasing speed and resource efficiency.
Many of the future requirements can already be met by LTE-Advanced Pro, as
emphasized in the first part of this book. Moore's Law is enabling an ever-increased
integration density of cellular modems, already today leading to peak data rates in
the hundreds of Mbps, and it is allowing concentration of network signal processing
complexity centrally in a Cloud RAN. Interference handling will see an increase in
sophistication and complexity, with network-based interference management and
terminal-based interference mitigation algorithms. LTE-Advanced Pro capacity and
coverage will increase through the use of LTE in unlicensed spectrum, increased flexibility
of the LTE frame structure, a greater number of carriers, and more antennas at the base
station. At the same time, a growing demand in IoT and wearable systems is bringing
tremendous advances in user experience, applications, and overall system efficiency.
A straightforward evolution of the existing technology will thus be able to meet
our demands for a few more years, but the time will soon come that requires a true
revolution: future applications will continue to require more spectrum, more data, and
more intelligence in communication systems. The communication networks will have
to be fundamentally altered to provide the immense computing and communications
power required to leverage that surge in connected devices. 5G networks will be smarter
and more efficient to support each type of radio spectrum and each type of device, from
the simple sensor to the sophisticated self-driving car. From embedded devices in all
kinds of equipment to autonomous vehicles and drones, smart enterprises and cities,
5G networks will connect things to each other, to persons, and the cloud. Billions of
increasingly smart and connected devices, data-rich personalized services, and cloud
applications are setting the requirements for a smarter, more powerful, and more
efficient 5G network. The transition to this 5G network is finally bringing computing and

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■ CONCLUSION

communications together. Industry partnerships with computing and communication

ecosystem leaders are laying the foundation for future 5G networks now to make amazing
user experiences possible in the future. It starts with these ecosystem leaders joining
forces on pre-standard 5G radio technologies and network solutions to enable early
implementation of both 5G mobile devices and wireless network infrastructure, as well as
interoperability of 5G radio technologies to meet the device connectivity requirements for
wireless networks mid- and long-term. Computing and communication industry leaders
are developing and verifying 5G mobile device and network solutions for centimeter and
millimeter wave bands including spectrum sharing in unlicensed spectrum bands. The
industry is also working on advances in radio access network technologies, including
anchor-booster cell and massive MIMO to further improve 5G wireless network capacity.
New, highly integrated modems, antennas, and highly sophisticated systems-
on-chips are required to provide robust connectivity for IoT, mobile devices, and
PCs. Chipset suppliers already offer 5G mobile trial platforms to develop early high-
performance prototype solutions that put 5G development on a fast-track. Chipset
suppliers, infrastructure providers, and mobile network operators are collaborating on
these 5G mobile trial platforms to drive network transformation, the cloud, and IoT.
Furthermore, the network setup and related business models are about to change
dramatically. An upside-down reshuffling of the entire industry is on our doorstep. As
illustrated in the accompanying figure, we will abandon the large scale deployment of
infrastructure hardware components.

The network infrastructure of the future

In-the-field base stations will disappear, as corresponding processing functionalities

are moved to remote data centers and only remote antenna heads remain in the field,
complemented by Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) capabilities—fed by optical-fiber links
or high-rate wireless connections to the data centers. Finally, cloud computing converges
to fog computing where the right mixture of centralized and distributed processing
elements is used.
On the technical side, this approach allows for highly efficient joint processing of
all cells performing near-perfect interference mitigation. Thanks to Network-Function-
Virtualization (NFV) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN), computational resources
will be allocated just where they are needed, preferably to be adopted on a short-term
basis. Any major maintenance tasks are performed centrally at the data center, and

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 ■ CONCLUSION

experts no longer need to be sent out into the field. Software to be executed in the data
centers is expected to largely build on open source solutions, possibly combined with
proprietary security modules, and thus lead to a massive cost reduction.
From a business model perspective, this vision will be an entire game changer.
Network operators will typically no longer own any spectrum or infrastructure—instead,
all spectrum and computational resources will be rented on a per-need basis, possibly
in a highly dynamic fashion taking local capacity needs and user behavior into account.
New stakeholders that are deploying and leasing hardware and spectrum resources to
operators will arise.
A typical example is a short-term, large-scale event, such as a football match.
Most of the time, a stadium is empty and no major wireless traffic is occuring. During
this time, a minimum of spectrum and computational resources are assigned to the
concerned geographic area. During a match, this situation changes dramatically—tens of
thousands of people will enjoy the match, access social media, share real time video, and
so on. During this limited time, massive spectrum and computational resources will be
allocated to this specific geographic area in order to meet the user demands.
To sum up, while ensuring that 4G LTE-Advanced Pro satisfies current and near-
future user demands, the work toward 5G will continue: ultra-fast data transfer speeds,
low communication latency, higher network capacity, and increased energy efficiency to
support 5G applications, wearables, and IoT systems.

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Index

„A „F
Active Antenna Systems (AAS), 48 Frequency division
Almost Blank Subframes (ABS), 20 duplex (FDD), 80, 89
Analog-digital-converter (ADC), 128 Frequency Domain Multiple Access
Angular spreads (AS), 121 Frequency Division Duplex
(FDMA-FDD), 4
„B
Block error rates (BLER), 30 „G
General Authorized Access (GAA), 100
„C
Component carriers (CCs), 18 „H
Compound annual growth Heterogeneous networks
rate (CAGR), 113 (HetNet), 113
Cross-carrier scheduling (CCS), 24 High speed packet access (HSPA), 5, 41
Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request
(HARQ), 5
„D
Delay spread (DS), 121
Device-to-device „ I, J, K
communication (D2D), 8, 61 Inter-cell interference coordination
Digital-to-analog converter (DAC), 126 (ICIC), 23
Domain manager (DM), 96 International Mobile Communications
(IMT), 112
Internet of Things (IoT), 47, 82
„E Interoperability testing (IOT), 28, 47
Element manager (EM), 96
Enhanced Machine-to-machine
communication (eMTC), 8
„L
Enhanced NodeB (eNB), 14 Large scale parameters (LSP), 121
European Conference of Postal and Licensed Shared Access (LSA), 43, 89
Telecommunications Link adaptation (LA), 30
Administrations (CEPT), 117 Low-density parity check codes
Extreme mobile broadband (xMBB), 8, 53 (LDPC), 129

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■ INDEX

„M „Q
Machine-type communication (MTC) Quality of Service (QoS), 18, 88
radio systems, 83
Millimeter wave (mmWave), 114
Ministry of Industry and Information „R
Technology (MIIT), 45 Radio-access technology
Mobile edge computing (MEC), 69 (RAT), 42, 58
Mobile network operators (MNOs), 87 Radio frequency (RF), 13, 16
Multicast Broadcast Single Frequency Reconfigurable Radio
Network (MBSFN), 18 Systems (RRS), 95
Rradio access
network (RAN), 14
„N
National Development and Reform
Commission (NDRC), 45 „S
National Regulation Administrations Scheduling Request (SR), 19
(NRAs), 87 Shadow fading (SF), 121
Network assisted interference Software-defined
cancellation and suppression networking (SDN), 68, 132
(NAICS), 21, 24 Spectrum Access
Network element (NE), 96 System (SAS), 43, 89
Network-Function-Virtualization
(NFV), 132
Network manager (NM), 96 „ T, U
Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) system, 2 Time division duplex (TDD), 80
Time Division Multiplexing Access
(TDMA), 5
„O
Opportunistic network (ON), 8, 72–76
Out-of-band (OOB) emissions, 114 „V
Over the air (OTA) testing, 32 Vehicle-to-vehicle
communication (V2V), 63
„P
ProSe communication, 62 „ W, X, Y, Z
ProSe discovery, 62 World radio conferences (WRC), 117

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