What is 5 G ?
"I don't know -:)." was the answer to this question when I first wrote this page in
mid 2013 and the answer hasn't changed until the mid 2016. From late 2016 many
things started happening in 3GPP and now (Mar 2017) we got several TRs (38.801,
38.802, 38.803, 38.804) that describes the details of technical requirement to be
specified in formal NR(5G) specification, meaning that now we know what 5G (NR)
will look like in pretty much detail.
If you want to get the formal 3GPP definition right away, just jump to Formal (3GPP)
Definition but I will keep all of the other definitions as well in case when you are
interested in tracking down what kind of vision multiple major players had and how
those visions has been consolidated into the formal definition (requirement).
Nothing about 5G is defined officially in any standard organization as of now.
However there are several organization that describes key technical component or
key performance indicator (KPI) that may envision on what 5G will be like. I would
put the list of features from several different organization.
Initial Definition
Formal (3GPP) Definition
Build Up Intuition on 5G
Definition by METIS
Definition by 5GNOW
Definition by SKT
Definition by 4G America
Definition by NTT DOCOMO
Initial Definition
When the first talk about 5G started and some of prototyping test result came out,
the focus was mainly around throughput. (This kind of focus hasn't been changed
much until mid 2013)
At least, one thing for sure will be that the data rate will be at least several G bps.
(The final goal of 4G data rate is 1 Ghz and we still have a long way to go to achieve
this 1Gb rate).
By now (as of Nov 2015), you may see a couple of dozen whitepapers about the 5G.
If you read through all of these whitepapers, you would notice that the key concepts
they claim in the documents are almost same. Personally, I would recommend you
to read through the documents from METIS. I think METIS documents are by far the
most extensive and most in-depth. The only problem is that those documents are
too thick :)
Followings are some of my personsl keywords about the 5G reading through most of
these papers.
Keywords
Description
Extremly High Data
By far, we don't know yet (as of Nov 2015) what would be the maximum
Rate
throughput. But I think it will be targeted to be at least around 10 Gbps.
Just achieving the extermly low throughput has no technical problem. But critical
Extremly Low Data
technological issue is that achieving the extremely low data rate with extremly low
Rate
cost and extremely low energy (battery) consumption. Refer toMTC criteria for the
details.
Extremly Low
Latency
We don't know yet (as of Nov 2015) what would be the target latency. But by far,
around 1 ms latency are the most commonly mentioned number. (In terms of
subframe length, it would be around 100us or 200 us)
Super High
Frequency
Super Wide
Bandwidth
The words 'High Frequency' or 'Low Frequency' can be misleading because it
would be a relative concept, but I say 'Super High Frequency' comparing to
current cellular communication frequency (mostly under 3 Ghz). By far (as of Nov
2015), the most frequently commented frequenty blocks are 6 Ghz, 15 Ghz,
20~30Ghz and the highest frequency being tried is a little bit over 70 Ghz.
The words 'Wide Bandwidth' or 'Narrow Bandwidth' can be misleading because it
would be a relative concept, but I say 'Super Wide Bandwidth' comparing to
current cellular communication bandwidth (100 MHz, ideal max in 4G). The most
commonly mentioned bandwidths are 160 Mhz, 400 Mhz, 800 Mhz. Currently the
widest bandwidth being mentioned are 2 Ghz bandwidth.
Softwares as much
Many components in core network would be software based and with this it would
as possible
become very flexible and accomdate news features in short time frame
Formal (3GPP) Definition
Recently (as of Jun 2016) there has been a couple of RAN meeting with major focus
on 5G and several official technical terms has been defined.
The first thing to be defined would be 'what is the name that refers to the whole 5G
technology ?'. As we call 4G as LTE, there must be similar name for 5G. What is it ?
At least for now, the official name for 5G is NR that stands for New Radio. (I already
see many people saying NR is not a proper name because 5G does not refers only to
Radio Technology.. but anyway for now, NR is the official term.
Then what is official definition of NR. Since there is no single line official definition
for LTE, there is no single line official definition for NR. But in my personal definition,
I would say 'NR is a collection of technology from Physical layer to Core Network that
need to achieve the followiing three major feature (requirement) as illustrated
below. The term shown in this diagrams are also formal 3GPP terms and you will see
these terms in most of the 3GPP documents on NR. So it would be good for you to
get familiar with these terminologies.
Build up Intuition on 5G
Before you read, just enjoy these video clips and let your brain build up its own
intuition(Insight).
World's first 5G mobile 'device'
Millimeter Wave Technology for 5G
Definition by METIS
More organized and formal definition can be made from METIS which were proposed
in Aug, 2013. Even though METIS does not put forth explicit 'definition', it proposes
several KPI (Key Performance Indicator). I think we can say "A communication
system satisfying the METIS KPI can be categorized as 5G".
Following is the list of KIPs and test cases performing the measurement of KPIs
proposed by METIS. (Refer to D1.1 and D2.1 METIS document for details)
Technical Requirement proposed by METIS to meet 5G goal are :
10-100 times higher typical user data rate, where in a dense urban
environment the typical user data rate will range from 1Gbit/s to 10Gbit/s;
1,000 times more mobile data per area (per user), where the volume per
area (per user) will be over 100 Gbps/km2;
Support for 10-100 times more connected devices;
10 times longer battery life for low-power massive machine communications
where machines such as sensors or pagers will have a battery life of a
decade;
Support of ultra-fast application response times, where the end-to-end
latency will be less than 5ms with high reliability;
Ability to fulfil these requirements under a similar cost and energy
dissipation per area as in today 抯 cellular systems.
Definition by 5GNOW
5GNOW does not decribe much about high level definition or use model of 5G. I
guess any 5G high level definition fall into the scope of METIS definition/use model.
5GNOW discuss more on lower level impelmentation of 5G. Key implementation
Item discussed/proposed by 5GNOW is as follows.
After I've read most of 5GNOW Deliverable document, the key words that pop-up
consitantly in my mind are
Asynchronous
Bursty low data rate transmission
Enhanced PRACH
Think on your own why these would be issues and then refer to 5GNOW Deliverable
Documents.
Definition by SKT
Following came from the white paper issued by SKT (SK Telecom, South Korea)
Following table also comes from SKT WhitePaper . To be honest, I am not sure how
much of these items will be eventually adopted by the industry standard, but I think
this can be a good list of starting points if you want to do some more detailed
research on specific technologies for future communication. I recommend you to
read the original WhitePaper a couple of times and search the related document (e.g,
Related Paper and Thesis for each items)
1. Realistic UX and 5G Contents Process
Object/space Recognition
objects and spaces by a camera or
Fast Recognition of surrounding
sensors
Display(Rendering) of an object in
Real Time Rendering and Display
realtime recognized by glass or
HMD
Reconstructing a real image of an
Real Time Hologram Processing
object with 360 degree field of view
in 3D space
2. Efficient Processing & Transmission of Tactile Multimedia
MMT(MPEG Media Transport)
minimize latency in media
a special MPEG technology to
transmission in All-IP network
Multimedia Coding Technique for
efficient creation/transmission of
High Efficiency Multimedia Coding
realistic 3D multimeidia contents
(e.g, MVC : Multi-view Video
Encoding)
Dynamic Allocation and
Cloud-based Computing, Caching and
Orchestration of cloud resource and
Orchastration
caching to process realistic high
volume multimedia
3. Cloud-based All-IP Network and Service Platform
NFV-based Virtualied Core Network
Operation
Techniques to build the cloud by
virtualizing a standard hardware
and operate a range of
networ/service functions on the
software-based network.
Techniques to centralize and
virtualize DU(Digital Unit) of a base
Virtualized RAN
station into a standard HW based
SDN and integrated Orchestraion
cloud and process RAN signals in
real time.
Effective control and lifecycle
management of the software-based
network services from a centralized
& unified network service