Brochure A4 Nospread 5G Vision
User Manual: 5G-Vision
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5G Vision
The 5G Infrastructure Public Private Partnership:
the next generation of
communication networks and services.
5G
infrastructure
Supported by the
Smart network
convergence
Business models based
on shared resources
New network
and service capabilities
An open ecosystem
for innovation
Better sustainability
and scalability
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 3
INTRODUCTION 5
KEY DRIVERS 6
5G DISRUPTIVE CAPABILITIES 8
DESIGN PRINCIPLES 10
KEY ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES 11
SPECTRUM CONSIDERATIONS 13
5G TIMELINE 14
Key drivers
5G will not only be an evoluon of mobile broadband networks. It
will bring new unique network and service capabilies. Firstly, it will
ensure user experience connuity in challenging situaons such as
high mobility (e.g. in trains), very dense or sparsely populated areas,
and journeys covered by heterogeneous technologies. In addion,
5G will be a key enabler for the Internet of Things by providing
a plaorm to connect a massive number of sensors, rendering
devices and actuators with stringent energy and transmission
constraints. Furthermore, mission crical services requiring very
high reliability, global coverage and/or very low latency, which are
up to now handled by specic networks, typically public safety, will
become navely supported by the 5G infrastructure.
5G will integrate networking, compung and storage resources into
one programmable and unied infrastructure. This unicaon will
allow for an opmized and more dynamic usage of all distributed
resources, and the convergence of xed, mobile and broadcast
services. In addion, 5G will support mul tenancy models,
enabling operators and other players to collaborate in new ways.
Future European society and economy will strongly rely on 5G infrastructure.
The impact will go far beyond existing wireless access networks with the aim for communication
services, reachable everywhere, all the time, and faster. 5G is an opportunity for the European
ICT sector which is already well positioned in the global R&D race. 5G technologies will be
adopted and deployed globally in alignment with developed and emerging markets’ needs.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
5G disruptive capabilities
5G will provide an order of magnitude Improvement in
performance in the areas of more capacity, lower latency,
more mobility, more accuracy of terminal locaon, increased
reliability and availability. 5G will allow the connecon of
many more devices simultaneously and to improve the
terminal baery capacity life. Lastly, 5G will help European
cizens to manage their personal data, tune their exposure
over the Internet and protect their privacy.
5G infrastructures will be also much more ecient. The
enhanced spectrial eciency will enable 5G systems to
consume a fracon of the energy that a 4G mobile networks
consumes today for delivering the same amount of transmied
data. 5G will reduce service creaon me and facilitate the
integraon of various players delivering parts of a service.
Lastly, 5G systems will be built on more ecient hardware. The
ultra-ecient 5G hardware will be energy aware, very exible
and interworking in very heterogeneous environments. The
increased eciency of the 5G infrastructure will allow costs to
be dramacally reduced.
Design principles
5G design will ensure high exibility and be driven by a service
approach. The network shall exibly and rapidly adapt to a
broad range of usage requirements and deliver converged
services preserving security and privacy across a versale
architecture with unied control of any type of ICT resources.
Since 5G will enable new business models in a programmable
manner, Applicaon Programming Interfaces (APIs) should
be available at dierent levels (resources, connecvity and
service enablers) to support a variety of network and service
applicaon developers.
Leveraging on the characterisc of current cloud compung, 5G will
push the single digital market further, paving the way for virtual pan
European operators relying on naonwide infrastructures.
5G will be designed to be a sustainable and scalable technology.
Firstly, the telecom industry will compensate tremendous usage
growth by drasc energy consumpon reducon and energy
harvesng. In addion, cost reducon through human task
automaon and hardware opmizaon will enable sustainable
business models for all ICT stakeholders.
Last but not least, 5G will create an ecosystem for technical and
business innovaon. Since network services will rely more and
more on soware, the creaon and growth of startups in the sector
will be encouraged. In addion, the 5G infrastructures will provide
network soluons and involve vercal markets such as automove,
energy, food and agriculture, city management, government,
healthcare, manufacturing, public transportaon, and so forth.
4
Key technological
components
5G wireless will support a heterogeneous set
of integrated air interfaces: from evoluons
of current access schemes to brand new
technologies. 5G networks will encompass
cellular and satellite soluons. Seamless
handover between heterogeneous wireless
access technologies will be a nave feature
of 5G, as well as use of simultaneous radio
access technologies to increase reliability
and availability. The deployment of ultra-
dense networks with numerous small cells
will require new interference migaon,
backhauling and installaon techniques.
5G will be driven by soware. Network
funcons are expected to run over a unied
operang system in a number of points
of presence, especially at the edge of the
network for meeng performance targets.
As a result, it will heavily rely on emerging
technologies such as Soware Dened
Networking (SDN), Network Funcons
Virtualizaon (NFV), Mobile Edge Compung
(MEC) and Fog Compung (FC) to achieve the
required performance, scalability and agility.
5G will ease and opmize network
management operaons. The development
of cognive features as well as the advanced
automaon of operaon through proper
algorithms will allow opmizing complex
business objecves, such as end-to-end
energy consumpon. In addion, the
exploitaon of Data Analycs and Big Data
techniques will pave the way to monitor the
users Quality of Experience through new
metrics combining network and behavioral
data while guaranteeing privacy.
Spectrum
considerations
It is expected that 5G access networks
for some services will require very wide
conguous carrier bandwidths (e.g. hundreds
of MHz up to several GHz) to be provided at a
very high overall system capacity. To support
the requirements for wide conguous
bandwidths, higher carrier frequencies
above 6 GHz need to be considered. The
consideraon of any new bands for such
services will require careful assessment
and recognion of other services using, or
planning to use, these bands. Maintaining
a stable and predictable regulatory and
spectrum management environment is
crical for the long term investments.
Research on this spectrum has to take into
account long-term investments so that they
can be preserved. The exclusive mobile
licensed spectrum assignment methods will
remain important even if new techniques
may be envisaged to improve spectrum
ulizaon under some circumstances.
Timeline
The start of commercial deployment of 5G
systems is expected in years 2020+. The
exploratory phase to understand detailed
requirements on future 5G systems and
to idenfy the most promising technical
opons has already started. Although several
standardizaon bodies will potenally be
involved in the 5G denion, 3GPP will be
most probably the focal point for technical
specicaons, with 5G study items starng
from 2015.
INTRODUCTION
1 Worldbank: Informaon and Communicaon for Development: Extending Reach and Increasing Impact –
Economic impacts of broadband, 2009,
hp://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTIC4D/Resources/IC4D_Broadband_35_50.pdf.
2 EU Commission: Digital Agenda Scoreboard – The ICT Sector and R&D&I. 2012.
hps://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/scoreboard.
1This paper gives an overview of
the 5G vision of the European ICT
sector. It addresses the key drivers
and disruptive capabilities for 5G
as well as the design principles, key
technological components, spectrum
and timeline considerations.
The strategic nature of the communicaon sector
extends beyond its sole industrial domain, as the
boundaries with the IT domain tend to blur. 5% of
European GDP, with an annual value of about € 660
billion, is generated today by the ICT sector itself.
Addional investment in ICT in Europe could contribute
to a rebirth of GDP growth in Europe up to 1.21%
points in high-income economies and 1.38% points in
low and middle-income economies, as suggested by a
report from the World Bank1. The overall employment
level of the ICT sector in Europe has been rather stable
between 7.2 to 7.5 million employees since 2002
(Source: Digital Agenda Scoreboard2).
European industry has been historically strong in
research, development and integraon of complex
systems like communicaon networks as well as
manufacturing crical systems. A wide spread and well-
established research community in R&D centres and
universies is cooperang with industry and SMEs for
knowledge and IPR generaon. The novel 5G network
requirements, technologies and architectures will
introduce a wide range of industrial opportunies for
both established and new actors among which SMEs.
The 5G Infrastructure PPP is a unique opportunity for
the European ICT industry to compete on the global
market for 5G infrastructure deployment, operaon
and services.
6
5G will bring new unique service capabilies for consumers but also
for new industrial stakeholders (e.g. vercal industries, novel forms of
service providers or infrastructure owners and providers).
Firstly, it will ensure user experience connuity in challenging
situaons. HD video or teleworking will be commonplace and
available anywhere, regardless of if the user is in a dense area like
a stadium or a city centre, or in a village or in a high speed train or
an airplane. 5G Systems will provide user access anywhere and will
select transparently for the user the best performing 5G access among
heterogeneous technologies like WiFi, 4G and new radio interfaces.
The choice of the best performing access will not only be based on
throughput but on the most relevant metrics depending on the nature
of the service e.g. latency may be more important than throughput for
an online game.
In addion, 5G will be a key enabler for the Internet of Things by
providing the plaorm to connect a massive number of objects
to the Internet. Sensors and actuators will spread everywhere.
KEY DRIVERS
4G was designed for improving capacity, user data-rates, spectrum usage and latency with
respect to 3G. 5G is more than an evolution of mobile broadband. It will be a key enabler of the
future digital world, the next generation of ubiquitous ultra-high broadband infrastructure that
will support the transformation of processes in all economic sectors and the growing consumer
market demand. The following paragraph intends to give an insight on what makes 5G so special.
Since they require very low energy consumpon to save baery
lifeme, the network will have to support this eecvely. Objects, users
and their personal network, whether body worn or in a household,
will be producer and consumer of data. Future smart phones, drones,
robots, wearable devices and other smart objects will create local
networks, using a multude of dierent access methods. 5G will allow
all these objects to connect independently from a specic available
network infrastructure.
Furthermore, some mission crical services will become feasible
navely on the 5G infrastructure thanks to the unprecedented
performance achievable on demand. It will cover services which were
handled by specic networks for reliability reasons such as public
safety. It will also cover new services requiring a real me reacvity
such as Vehicle-to-Vehicle or Vehicle-to-Road services paving the way
towards the self-driving car, factory automaon or remote health
services.
As a conclusion, 5G needs to support in an ecient way three dierent
type of trac proles, namely high throughput for e.g. video services,
low energy for eg. long –lived sensors and low latency for mission
crical services. In addion, 5G infrastructure will cover the network
needs and contribute to the digitalizaon of vercal markets such as
automove, banking, educaon, city management, energy, ulies,
nance, food and agriculture, media, government, healthcare,
insurance, manufacturing, real estate, transportaon and retail.
An opportunity to launch brand new services
2
FIGURE 1. 5G new service capabilities
USER EXPERIENCE CONTINUITY INTERNET OF THINGS MISSION CRITICAL SERVICES
A unified telecom and IT infrastructure
ready for multi-tenancy
A sustainable and scalable technology
A larger ecosystem, more open to new players, start-ups and other sectors
Our vision is that in ten years from now, telecom and IT will be integrated
towards a common very high capacity ubiquitous infrastructure. In order
to assure the required scalability and exibility, the network funcons
will be more and more “virtualised” on general purpose, programmable
and specic high performance hardware that will oer resources for data
transport, roung, storage and execuon. 5G will integrate telecom,
compute and storage resources into one programmable and unied
infrastructure which will allow for an opmized usage of all distributed
resources.
The wireless part of global network connecvity will grow from 45% in
2012 to 75% in 2020 (UMTS Forum3), with Wi-Fi covering close to 50% of
total connecvity. Consumers as well as vercal business segments will
want to use a unied wireless and wireline telecommunicaon network
for an extreme variety of services. Being unied, 5G infrastructure will
oer navely converging capabilies for xed and mobile accesses, as
well as for broadcast and broadband networks.
In addion, this infrastructure will be ready for mul-tenancy. Operators
will add to their services porolio the possibility to be asset providers
(infrastructure, network funcons, plaorm oered as a service) for
other operators or other players like integrators. Leveraging on this
fundamental design principle will push the single digital market further,
paving the way for virtual pan European operators relying on naonally
deployed infrastructures.
5G systems have to resolve the fundamental challenge of handling the
ancipated dramac growth in the number of terminal devices, the
connuous growth of trac (at a 50-60% CAGR), and heterogeneous
network layouts without causing a dramac increase of power
consumpon and management complexity within networks. In
addion, users and the civil society will be much more sensive to the
sustainability of telecom services. As a result, 5G will have to be designed
to be a sustainable and scalable technology.
Firstly, 5G will bring drasc energy eciency improvement and develop
energy harvesng everywhere. This energy chase will cover terminal
devices, network elements, and the network as a whole including data
centres. For example, it will enable a 10 years lifeme of a baery
powered sensor. It will also contribute to Europe’s objecves to improve
our energy sources mix with more renewables installed e.g. on base
staons.
In addion, costs reducon through human tasks automaon and
hardware usage opmizaon will feed the development of sustainable
business models for all ICT stakeholders. 5G will embed advanced
automaon towards autonomics and cognive management features
which will improve operators eciency. It will also improve the
compeveness of the European ICT industry. Furthermore, to sustain
ubiquitous access in developing countries (the next 2 Billions of
people) or in low-density areas, ultra-low cost network opons will be
developed. Lower cost technologies at all levels of networks (access,
backhaul, core, IT, energy), as well as new types of deployments such as
high altude plaorms (balloon, drones…), will be explored by relaxing
target objecves on availability, peak rate, and latency.
Last but not least, 5G will open the ecosystem for technical and business
innovaon. Business models will involve more and more partners
delivering a part of the value. The extension of the cloud compung
model to the telecom industry will unleash innovaon and allow new
players to access the ecosystem.
With 5G, network services will rely massively on soware. It will
strengthen Europe’s soware industry, including SME developers and
soluons providers that can beer compete in an increasingly hardware-
agnosc market. Larger IT providers have already penetrated this market
recently, relying on their experse in cloud compung and virtualizaon
to provide the same value proposion towards the telecom sector. It
will cause a disrupve impact to network manufacturers which will re-
posion themselves, with a rollout of soware soluons from their in-
house development labs, or strategic partnerships with IT providers.
With 5G, the trend will be to dynamically adjust resources to demands.
Infrastructure resources, connecvity and all network funcons will be
delivered as a service. It will foster partnership-based business models.
Operators will tap into the opportunity to enhance the value of third
party services. Partnerships will be established on mulple layers ranging
from sharing the infrastructure, to exposing network capabilies as a
service end-to-end, and integrang partners’ services into the 5G system
through a rich and soware oriented capability set.
In addion, we will see some specic network plaorms for each vercal
sector with dedicated features and performance requirements (e.g. high
reliability for health or automobile vercals or high density of terminals
for smart cies). The use of COTS (Commercial of the Shelf) instead of
current proprietary technologies, will change the market with these
industries having a much greater inuence on the development of
network services and their SMEs will be able to innovate and launch new
applicaons leveraging the new capabilies of 5G.
3 UMTS Forum Report 44 “Mobile trac forecasts 2010-2020© UMTS Forum January 2011”,
hp://www.umts-forum.org/component/opon,com_docman/task,doc_download/gid,2537/Itemid,213/
The highly demanding disrupve capabilies of 5G require an enormous
research eort for industry and academia, because it requires orders
of magnitude of improvement over the current technology and
infrastructure. The following numbers, which are currently under
discussion in various fora such as NGMN or ITU-R, indicate the advances
required by 5G systems:
5G DISRUPTIVE CAPABILITIES
5G will provide disruptive capabilities as described below, which will be an economy booster by
fostering new ways to organize the business sector of service providers, as well as fostering new
business models supported by advanced ICT. In addition, 5G should pave the way for a larger number
of partnerships and Business to Business to Customers (B2B2C) business models through APIs
deployed at dierent levels (assets, connectivity, enablers). The 5G architecture and technology will
allow using only the necessary network functions and resources for each specific service (e.g. some
M2M devices may not need mobility), as well as sharing infrastructure and spectrum costs in a
flexible way between a rich ecosystem of service providers.
At the societal level, the 5G disrupve capabilies will provide
ubiquitous access to a wide range of applicaons and services. These
will be provided with increased resilience, connuity, and much
higher resource eciency including a signicant decrease of energy
consumpon. At the same me security and privacy will be protected.
In addion, 5G should provide enormous improvements in capacity and
boost user data rates. In parcular, peak data rates in the order of 10
Gb/s will be required to support services such as 3D telepresence on
mobile devices. In addion, a capacity of 10 Tb/s/km² will be required
to cover e.g. a stadium with 30.000 devices relaying the event in social
networks at 50 Mb/s. Moreover, reduced end-to-end latencies of
the order of 5 ms are needed to support interacve applicaons and
ensure ultra-responsive mobile cloud-services. Future 5G infrastructure
is expected to cope with 30-50 Mb/s for a single video transmission
(before channel coding) and perform most of the light-eld and sound-
eld processing in the network, in order to adapt the data stream with
(close to) “zero latency”.
Besides human-centric applicaons outlined above it is expected
that a wide variety of Internet of Things (IoT), Massive Machine-
Type Communicaon (M-MTC), and Ultra-reliable Machine-Type
communicaon (U-MTC) will be prevalent by 2020. Supporng
the diverse requirements coming from IoT vercals may require
restructuring key architecture components of mobile systems.
1,000 X in mobile data volume per geographical area
reaching a target ≥ 10 Tb/s/km2
1,000 X in number of connected devices reaching a
density ≥ 1M terminals/km2
100 X in user data rate reaching a peak terminal data
rate ≥ 10Gb/s
1/10 X in energy consumption compared to 2010
1/5 X in end-to-end latency4 reaching 5 ms for e.g.
tactile Internet and radio link latency reaching a target ≤
1 ms for e.g. Vehicle to Vehicle communication
1/5 X in network management OPEX
1/1,000 X in service deployment time reaching a
complete deployment in ≤ 90 minutes
3
4 End-to-End latency should be understood as limited for
the case of terminals physically close, as nearby vehicles,
a swarm of robots in an automated factory, or a terminal
connecng to advanced services provided by a cloud
located within its backhaul.
8
In addition, 5G services will complement and largely
outperform the current operational capabilities for wide-area
systems, reaching the following high-performance indicators:
FIGURE 2. Radar diagram of 5G disruptive capabilities
Guaranteed
user data rate
≥ 50Mb/s
Capable of human-
oriented terminals
≥ 20 billion
Capable of IoT terminals
≥ 1 trillion
Aggregate service
reliability
≥ 99.999%
Mobility support at speed
≥ 500km/h
for ground transportation
Accuracy of outdoor
terminal location
≤ 1 meter
Non-quantave capabilies of the technology include a soware-
based system architecture, simplied authencaon, support for
shared infrastructure, mul-tenancy and mul-RAT (with seamless
handover), support for terrestrial and/or satellite communicaon,
robust security, privacy, and lawful intercepon capacity.
It is important to highlight that not all of the above performance
indicators will be required by every terminal everywhere and all the
me. Each connected device will typically have its mix of latency,
bandwidth and trac intensity characteriscs. Also, each connected
area will have its specic characteriscs: the network will not provide
the same coverage for a business district, a stadium, a residenal
area, or on board of a vehicle (bus, train, boat, airplane…). This is
why the infrastructure has to be adapted to the characteriscs of
the service demand expected at each area. In parcular, ultra-low
cost infrastructure opons will sasfy the demands of low ARPU
terminals/users, as they will be commonplace in developing regions
and as part of IoT services.
99.99%
90 days 1 K/km2
4G
5G
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MOBILE DATA VOLUME
10 Tb/s/km2
ENERGY EFFICIENCY
10% of current consumption
PEAK DATA RATE
10 Gb/s
MOBILITY
500km/h
RELIABILITY
99.999%
NUMBER OF DEVICES
1 M/km2
E2E LATENCY
5 ms
SERVICE DEPLOYMENT TIME
90 minutes
25 ms
10 Gb/s/km2
100 Mb/s
FIGURE 3. 5G networks and services vision
In order to meet the expected high throughput targets, small cells will
be pushed further leading to Ultra Dense Networks (UDN). As already
pointed out, 5G will cover human-to-human, human-to-machine and
machine-to-machine communicaons and this will drive the future
infrastructure towards all-encompassing smart connecvity: smart
cars, smart grids, smart cies, smart factories and so forth. It will foster
new Radio Area Network paradigms such as Device to Device (D2D) and
Moving Networks (MN).
The architecture of 5G will change dramacally compared to previous
generaons, in order to meet the expected business and performance
requirements, especially in terms of latency and reliability, and to
support new business models and scenarios, beyond what is currently
foreseeable. In order to realize such a radical view on what the 5G
infrastructure is to become, the various 5G subsystems and interfaces,
as well as their integraon into the overall 5G substrate need to be
inspired by modern operang system architectures.
While today’s mobile networks are an overlay on top of transport
network infrastructures, the foundaonal principles of soware and
compung architectures suggest designing 5G as a set of nave service/
network applicaons, and unifying all fundamental procedures of the
access stratum (AS) and non access stratum (NAS) protocols, such as
connecon, security, mobility and, especially, roung management.
DESIGN PRINCIPLES
Operators of ICT infrastructures need more network and services flexibility, scalability and business
sustainability. The future 5G infrastructure shall flexibly and rapidly adapt to a broad range of
requirements. Indeed, it will be required to host new types of services , new types of devices
(vehicles, machines, connected objects, things) and dierent technologies (for access, fronthaul and
backhaul).
4
It means convergence between xed and mobile networking services
with the associated evoluon of core and transport networks. This will
dramacally reduce latency due to protocol simplicaon and opmal
locaons of network/service applicaons and corresponding states;
improve reliability through the possibility of establishing simultaneously
mulple connecons, not limited to a single dimensional communicaon
chain; enable new business models through open interfaces (APIs for
resources, connecvity and services enablers); and support legacy
services and communicaon systems running applicaons fully
compable to them and their future enhancements. A vision of 5G
networks and services is illustrated in Figure 3.
While the diversity of services and the complexity of the infrastructure
will apparently increase, 5G is expected to radically cut total cost of
ownership (TCO) of the infrastructure, on the one hand, and the service
creaon and deployment mes, on the other. Hence, service/network
management that classically rely on the Operaon Administraon and
Management (OA&M) tools and the Business and Operaons Support
Systems (BSS and OSS) will evolve accordingly with advanced automaon
including cognive operaons for handling trillions of actuators,
sensors, and exploing Big Data for beer QoS and QoE, whatever the
prosumer will be (human, machine or thing). Energy consumpon will
be also dramacally reduced in the terminal and infrastructures and
harvesng energy systems will power ICT equipment.
10
Wireless technologies will be the
starting point
Designing a wireless access network that simultaneously
sases future demands for both human-centric and machine-
centric services calls for technologies capable of using
conguous and wide spectrum bandwidth; exible resource
allocaon and sharing schemes; exible air interfaces; new
waveforms; agile access techniques; advanced mul-antenna
beam-forming and beam-tracking and MIMO techniques; new
radio resource management algorithms, to name just a few.
5G wireless will support a heterogeneous set of integrated
air interfaces. 5G network deployments are expected in the
“low” band, i.e. frequencies below 6GHz on macro and small
cells, coexisng with legacy (2-3G) and LTE (4G) technologies;
and in the “high” band, i.e. frequencies above 6GHz, on
small cells, together with WiFi and previous releases of 3GPP
technologies.
The 5G network architecture will enable the integraon of
small cells and ultra-dense networks (UDN) which will require
new operaonal models for access networks like crowd
networking (relying partly on non-operators to deploy and
maintain the cells) which will call for new standard interfaces.
5G will leverage on the strengths
of both optical and wireless
technologies
The novel 5G architecture is also expected to integrate both
fronthaul and backhaul into a common transport network.
The technologies, which have been already idened span
from ber opcs with soware-dened opcal transmission
to novel CPRI-over-packet technologies, also considering
wireless links such as mmWave. On top of them a general
processing plane is expected to carry out bulk operaons in
shared transmission media, and provide carrier grade services
in terms of re-congurability, energy eciency and mul-
tenant operaons.
Furthermore, to achieve the expected capacity, coverage,
reliability, latency and improvements in energy consumpon,
the 5G architecture is expected to i) run over a converged
opcal-wireless-satellite infrastructure for network access,
backhauling and fronthauling with the possibility of
transming digital and modulated signals over the physical
connecons; ii) leverage exible intra-system spectrum usage;
iii) make opmal ulizaon of the specic strengths of the
dierent underlying infrastructures (e.g. leverage mulcast for
satellite or exible spectrum for opcal).
KEY ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES
5
5G will be driven by software
Network funcons virtualizaon (NFV) and soware-dened networking (SDN) provide examples for possible new design
principles to allow more exibility and ghter integraon with infrastructure layers, although performance and scalability need
further invesgaon. Both approaches stem from the IT realm: NFV leverages recent advances in server virtualizaon and
enterprise IT virtualizaon; SDN proposes logical centralizaon of control funcons and relies on advances in server scale out
and cloud technologies. However, none of those is essenally a networking technology, as the network is assumed to be there,
before NFV or SDN can be even used. Hence, 5G will provide a unied control for mul-tenant networks and services through
funconal architectures deployment across many operators’ frameworks, giving service providers, and ulmately prosumers, the
percepon of a convergence across many underlying wireless, opcal, network and media technologies. 5G will make possible
the fundamental shi in paradigm from the current “service provisioning through controlled ownership of infrastructures” to a
“unied control framework through virtualizaon and programmability of mul-tenant networks and services”.
Research & innovation collaborative
projects will play a key role in 5G
development
It is essenal that large-scale, mul-layered collaboraon projects are available
to achieve this transformaon. The ICT sector in Europe is leading the way to
drive this process, which is supported by the 5G Public-Private-Partnership (5G
PPP) in Horizon 2020 of the EU. The iniave can remove obstacles that may
hamper the 5G development by achieving an early consensus among key global
stakeholders, e.g. on a common 5G vision, architecture, spectrum ulizaon,
pre-standardizaon and internaonal collaboraon between Europe and the
relevant bodies in China, Japan, Korea and USA, to start from. In addion to
the private connuous eort, it is of vital importance that public authories
and the private sector develop eecve policies with regard to spectrum, pre-
standardizaon and internaonal collaboraon. What we need is an evolving
regulatory framework that provides a true level playing eld for current and
new players coming into the picture, thanks to the novel sustainable business
models that 5G will enable.
Funding for promising projects will speed up progress. The EU can play an
important role in consolidang and building on the most important research
and innovaon results aained in previous research programs, gathering
resources for 5G tests, proof of concept and large-scale trials, and bringing
the right stakeholders even beyond the ICT sector on board, notably vercal
industries. The METIS project, among others – e.g., MiWeba, MiWaves, 5GNow,
iJoin and CREW/EVARILOS – are very good examples of successful European
iniaves. These pan-European projects aim at contribung to the foundaon
of 5G and have been developing and evaluang key technology component
candidates for 5G systems.
Nevertheless, let us not forget that 5G is sll in its early research stages. As
presented above, a number of issues must be resolved before it can become
a reality: we need to join forces – across countries, connents, industries and
sectors. Europe has a key role to play in creang the right synergies, paving
the way for a hyper-networked future and building a beer connected world.
Eciency and security will be of
paramount importance
Energy eciency is also in circuit design, such as power ampliers
and analog front-ends in microwave and millimeter frequency ranges,
DSP-enabled opcal transceivers for access and backhaul networks,
and ultra-low power wireless sensors harvesng ambient energy, such
as solar, thermal, vibraon and electromagnec energy. In addion,
wireless power transfer technologies and opmizaon of sleep mode
switching present another excing alternave to baery-less sensor
operaon for M2M and D2D communicaons.
It is of course intended that such a revoluon in the network
infrastructure cannot happen without parallel evoluon of the
connected objects (terminals, machines, robots, drones, etc.) in terms
of wireless connecvity, computaonal power, memory capacity,
baery lifeme and, cost.
In 5G, security issues are radically amplied by the expected
mulplicaon of both types of stakeholders and numbers of tenants.
To resolve the potenal increased complexity within the system
associated with this, it will become necessary to work under dierent
contexts and to always consider security realms. It will require new
access control models, as we have seen them emerge in the domain
of online social networks and, generally, online services. Beyond
condenality, integrity and availability, cyber-physical system (CPS)
security, and new security concepts in this area, need to address
trustworthiness of informaon, integrity of remote plaorms,
contextual correctness, proof of possession and similar topics. The
existence of and support for highly limited devices such as sensors
will require probabilisc security mechanisms deployed in parallel
to the high-security soluons menoned before. Also, tailored
security at the service and device level should be envisioned: 5G
might consider dynamic control and data plane support for dierent
security system instanaons to be able to provide dierenated
security services on request. The dynamic composion of the 5G
infrastructure needs security guarantees within the system: beyond
the mutual authencaon and secure communicaon channel
establishment, we will need to delve into topics of infrastructure/
system integrity and operaonal security assurance. The key here is
to go beyond the currently prevailing operaonal security models like
prevenon and protecon, which tend to limit degrees of freedom. If
the system dynamics is key to achieve the agility of stakeholders (as
recent NFV and SDN iniaves suggest), then the survivability must
be increasingly understood as the major operaonal security model.
5 Analysys Mason, “Wireless network trac worldwide: forecasts and analysis 2014–2019,” October 2014
6 Cisco, “The Zeabyte Era: Trends and Analysis,” White Paper, June 2014
7 NGMN Alliance, “5G White Paper – Execuve Version,” 22 December 2014
8 METIS, “Deliverable D5.3. Descripon of the spectrum needs and usage principles,” 1 September 2014
9 Ofcom call for input, “Spectrum above 6 GHz for future mobile communicaons,” 16 January 2014
10 FCC noce of inquiry, “Use of spectrum above 24 GHz for mobile radio services,” GN Docket No. 14-177, FCC 14-154, 17 Oct 17 2014
12
Trends in the spectrum requirements
for wireless broadband access and
backhaul
Driven in parcular by video applicaons and the ever-increasing use of
smartphones, tablets and machine communicaon, mobile data trac
is expected to grow dramacally according to several reports, such as
Analysys Mason5 and Cisco6. These indicate about 50 to 60 % annual
growth over the ve year period 2013 to 2018, a trend which may well
connue beyond 2020. It is also expected that 5G access networks for
some services will require wide conguous carrier bandwidth (e.g.,
hundreds of MHz up to a few GHz) to be provided at a very high overall
system capacity. These will need to be supported by appropriately
scaled backhaul links that themselves will require adequate spectrum
resources.
Considerations for new wireless
broadband spectrum above 6 GHz
To support the requirements for wide conguous bandwidths,
higher carrier frequencies above 6 GHz need to be considered. For
instance, the NGMN Alliance has idened that wide bandwidths
may be required to “support very high data rates and shorter-range
connecvity”7.
Higher carrier frequencies can provide wide conguous bandwidth
for very high overall system capacity, as the eecve user range will
be relavely short, enabling very ecient frequency reuse over a
given geography. With increasing carrier frequency the propagaon
condions become more demanding than at the lower frequencies
tradionally used for wireless services. In parcular both path loss
and diracon loss become more severe, atmospheric eects must be
accounted for, and the use of direconal antennas becomes necessary.
The result will be comparavely short links which to some degree
basically rely on line-of-sight paths. In fact, this can be considered an
advantage rather than a drawback, as in dense urban sengs cell sizes
are becoming smaller anyway (e.g. of the order of hundreds of meters)
in order to provide high capacity. Furthermore, advances in technology
development such as 3D beam-forming and massive MIMO techniques
will realize their full potenal when taking advantage of the short
wave-lengths, which come with high frequency bands.
The consideraon of any new bands above 6 GHz for wireless networks
will require careful assessment and recognion of other services using,
or planning to use, these bands. This will require the applicaon of
several methods and criteria, including, but not limited to, e.g. the
minimum required bandwidth and the level of spectrum ulizaon,
including exisng and planned other services.
There is considerable work in the literature that provides useful
informaon on the most relevant spectrum bands, e.g., the outcome
of the EU METIS8 studies, the Ofcom consultaon9, and FCC10. These
views are given without prejudice to the normal regulatory processes
at ITU, European and naonal levels, including sharing studies as usual
and appropriate.
Spectrum management methods
Maintaining a stable and predictable regulatory and spectrum
management environment is crical for the long-term investments of
terrestrial and satellite operators and service providers into networks,
services, and spectrum. The exclusive mobile licensed spectrum
assignment methods will remain important for ensuring stability for
long-term investments into networks and the underlying spectrum.
In the interest of improving spectrum ulisaon, new techniques and
technologies may be envisaged to facilitate long-term co-existence
between services and applicaons. New technologies for the use of
higher frequency bands and innovave regulatory tools could provide
new spectrum coexistence opportunies for 5G systems.
Methods have been suggested and are invesgated involving a more
dynamic sharing of spectrum than is currently used. In addion,
cognive radio soluons may gain tracon in the market in coming
years.
SPECTRUM CONSIDERATIONS
6Radio based services rely on appropriate access to electromagnetic spectrum at suitable frequencies. To meet the
expected growth in trac and requirements associated with new applications as discussed in Section 1, the success of
5G systems and services depends inter-alia on i) a more ecient use of spectrum already assigned to terrestrial mobile
services; and ii) the timely ability to utilise certain new bands in order to support new capabilities for which demand exists.
Research on this spectrum has to take into account long-term investments so that they can be preserved.
The following three topics are considered concerning spectrum for 5G:
Trends in the spectrum requirements for mobile broadband access and backhaul
Spectrum management methods
Considerations for new wireless broadband spectrum above 6 GHz
5G TIMELINE
This section describes the most important milestones of research, development and innovation and
standardization activities on 5G.
7Research, Development and Innovation Phases
MILESTONES
2014-2015 Exploratory phase to understand detailed requirements on 5G future systems and idenfy most promising funconal architectures and
technology opons which will meet the requirements. These acvies will build on previous research work in industry and research
framework programmes as well as global acvies in other regions and standards bodies.
2015-2017 Detailed system research and development for all access means, backbone and core networks (including SDN, NFV, cloud systems,
undedicated programmable hardware…) by taking into account economic condions for future deployment.
2016-2018 Detailed system opmisaon by taking into account all idened requirements and constraints.
Idencaon and analysis of frequency bands envisaged for all 5G communicaons (also taking into account the result of WRC15) and
nal system denion and opmisaon by means of simulaons, validaon of concepts and early trials. Contribuons to inial global
standardisaon acvies e.g. in 3GPP. Preparaon of WRC19. Support of regulatory bodies for the allocaon of newly idened frequency
bands for the deployment of new systems. New frequency bands should be available around 2020.
2017-2018 Invesgaon, prototypes, technology demos and pilots of network management and operaon, cloud-based distributed compung and big
data for network operaon. Extension of pilots and trials to non ICT stakeholders to evaluate the technical soluons and the impact in the
real economy. Detailed standardisaon process based on validated system concepts by means of simulaons and close to real world trials.
2018-2020 Demonstraons, trials and scalability tesng of dierent complexity depending on standard readiness and component availability.
2020 New frequency bands available for trial network deployment and inial commercial deployment of new systems. Close to commercial
systems deployment under real world condions with selected customers to prepare economic exploitaon on global basis.
The start of commercial deployment of 5G systems is
expected in years 2020+, following the R&D phase and the
standardizaon and regulatory phases (e.g. spectrum in
World Radiocommunicaons Conference - WRC). Japan has
commied to have a commercial system for the 2020 Olympics.
It is too early for the European operators to commit to network
rollouts but many are predicng the 5G commercial availability
in 2020 – 2025. The exploratory phase to understand detailed
requirements on 5G future systems and idenfy most promising
technical and technological opons has already started before
2014. The path from 5G exploraon to early deployment
from the today’s perspecve in 5G PPP is summarized in the
following table.
Standardization Activities
Industry will play the major role in the 5G Infrastructure
PPP with respect to the necessary long-term investment in
global standardizaon and the integraon of technological
contribuons into complex interoperable systems. Results
of the 5G Infrastructure PPP projects will be suitable for
global standardizaon in bodies like 3GPP, IEEE, IETF and
other standards and specicaon bodies in the IT domain,
which can be contributed via established channels of 5G PPP
partner organizaons to respecve standards bodies. These
channels will be used to exploit research results in internaonal
standardizaon.
It is clearly expected that the core of the 5G standardizaon
related to mobile technologies will happen in the context
of 3GPP, e.g. 3GPP RAN, CT and SA groups. However the 5G
Infrastructure PPP members will also contribute to a wide
range of other standardizaon bodies (IETF, ETSI, ONF, Open
Daylight, OPNFV, Open Stack, …). A high-level overview of the
5G roadmap, as seen from 5G Infrastructure PPP, is depicted
in Figure 4.
TABLE 1 : FROM 5G EXPLORATION TO 5G DEPLOYMENT
14
ANNEX 5G PPP
The 5G Public-Private-Partnership (5G PPP) is within the EU Horizon 2020 – The EU Framework
Programme for Research and Innovation – under one of the most important EU Industrial Leadership
challenges: ICT-14 Advanced 5G Network Infrastructure. Within this research and innovation framework,
the European Commission (EC), under the approval of the European Parliament (EP), has already
committed 700M€ of Public funds over 6 years (2015-2021). From two to ten times higher is expected to
be the investment from Private Party: Industry, SME, and Research Institutes.
General objectives of 5G PPP are to
5G PPP is a consensus-oriented organization aimed at fostering roadmap-driven research, which is controlled by business-related,
performance and societal KPIs. The program has a lifetime from 2014 to 2020 and is open for international cooperation and participation.
Conduct research and innovation work that
will form the basis of the 5G infrastructure
for the Future Internet for a wide range of
applications from IoT (Internet of Things) to
very high throughput services;
Develop the next generation of network
technologies taking into account key
societal challenges and their networking
requirements;
Reinforce the European industrial capability
in communication network technologies;
Serve as a consensus-based platform for
effective collaboration of players from
industry, academia, research organizations
and SMEs from both the terrestrial and the
satellite communities
Pave the way towards successful
introduction of innovative business
models based on more powerful and open
networks;
Support the emergence of global standards;
Help addressing non-technological barriers
such as regulatory issues and spectrum
availability;
Validate technologies from a technical and
business perspective through early trials
and reference deployments;
Develop skilled personnel, which is needed
to research, develop and operate advanced
communication networks as well as use of
new systems in vertical markets;
Provide a reliable and trustworthy
communications infrastructure, which
secures critical infrastructures.
5G in 3GPP
4G in 3GPP
ITU
EC FP7
EC 5G PPP
SDN/NFV
Mobile Networks
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024
R14 (start SI) R15 R16
R14 (start SI)R13
WRC’15
R12
Vision
EC FP7 Pre-5G
5G PPP set-up
ONF, Open Daylight, OPNFV, Open Stack...
Radio experiments
5G PPP Phase
Vision Proposals Evaluation
IMT-2020
specifications
Wkp
R15 R16
WRC’19
15G PPP Phase 25G PPP Phase
Winter Olympics in South Korea
FIFA World Cup in Russia Summer Olympics in Japan
Note : Other Region events under elaboration
3
12 YEARS - Exploratory phase and specification 22 YEARS- Detailed research and optimization 32 YEARS - Experimentation and trials
TrialsRadio experiments 5G Deployment and commercialisation
FIGURE 4. 5G ROADMAP
This material has been designed and printed with support from the 5-Alive project
and the 5G Infrastructure Associaon. The 5-Alive Project has received funding by
the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Programme under the grant agreement
number: 643973
The European Commission support for the producon of this publicaon does
not constute endorsement of the contents which reects the views only of the
authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be
made of the informaon contained therein.
This document has been written by experts from
members of the 5G Infrastructure Association.
It represents the best of their expert knowledge
to date and aims to provide a perspective on the
development of 5G in Europe. This document is
released in February 2015.
Updates will be made regularly and are available for
download at www.5g-ppp.eu/roadmaps .
More information at
www.5g-ppp.eu
Supported by the
