Will 5G See its Blind Side? Evolving 5G for Universal Internet Access

Internet has shown itself to be a catalyst for economic growth and social equity but its potency is thwarted by the fact that the Internet is off limits for the vast majority of human beings. Mobile phones---the fastest growing technology in the world that now reaches around 80\% of humanity---can enable universal Internet access if it can resolve coverage problems that have historically plagued previous cellular architectures (2G, 3G, and 4G). These conventional architectures have not been able to sustain universal service provisioning since these architectures depend on having enough users per cell for their economic viability and thus are not well suited to rural areas (which are by definition sparsely populated). The new generation of mobile cellular technology (5G), currently in a formative phase and expected to be finalized around 2020, is aimed at orders of magnitude performance enhancement. 5G offers a clean slate to network designers and can be molded into an architecture also amenable to universal Internet provisioning. Keeping in mind the great social benefits of democratizing Internet and connectivity, we believe that the time is ripe for emphasizing universal Internet provisioning as an important goal on the 5G research agenda. In this paper, we investigate the opportunities and challenges in utilizing 5G for global access to the Internet for all (GAIA). We have also identified the major technical issues involved in a 5G-based GAIA solution and have set up a future research agenda by defining open research problems

Will SDN be part of 5G?

For many, this is no longer a valid question and the case is considered settled with SDN/NFV (Software Defined Networking/Network Function Virtualization) providing the inevitable innovation enablers solving many outstanding management issues regarding 5G. However, given the monumental task of softwarization of radio access network (RAN) while 5G is just around the corner and some companies have started unveiling their 5G equipment already, the concern is very realistic that we may only see some point solutions involving SDN technology instead of a fully SDN-enabled RAN. This survey paper identifies all important obstacles in the way and looks at the state of the art of the relevant solutions. This survey is different from the previous surveys on SDN-based RAN as it focuses on the salient problems and discusses solutions proposed within and outside SDN literature. Our main focus is on fronthaul, backward compatibility, supposedly disruptive nature of SDN deployment, business cases and monetization of SDN related upgrades, latency of general purpose processors (GPP), and additional security vulnerabilities, softwarization brings along to the RAN. We have also provided a summary of the architectural developments in SDN-based RAN landscape as not all work can be covered under the focused issues. This paper provides a comprehensive survey on the state of the art of SDN-based RAN and clearly points out the gaps in the technology.Comment: 33 pages, 10 figure

Predictive and core-network efficient RRC signalling for active state handover in RANs with control/data separation

Frequent handovers (HOs) in dense small cell deployment scenarios could lead to a dramatic increase in signalling overhead. This suggests a paradigm shift towards a signalling conscious cellular architecture with intelligent mobility management. In this direction, a futuristic radio access network with a logical separation between control and data planes has been proposed in research community. It aims to overcome limitations of the conventional architecture by providing high data rate services under the umbrella of a coverage layer in a dual connection mode. This approach enables signalling efficient HO procedures, since the control plane remains unchanged when the users move within the footprint of the same umbrella. Considering this configuration, we propose a core-network efficient radio resource control (RRC) signalling scheme for active state HO and develop an analytical framework to evaluate its signalling load as a function of network density, user mobility and session characteristics. In addition, we propose an intelligent HO prediction scheme with advance resource preparation in order to minimise the HO signalling latency. Numerical and simulation results show promising gains in terms of reduction in HO latency and signalling load as compared with conventional approaches

Achieving Ultra-Low Latency in 5G Millimeter Wave Cellular Networks

The IMT 2020 requirements of 20 Gbps peak data rate and 1 millisecond latency present significant engineering challenges for the design of 5G cellular systems. Use of the millimeter wave (mmWave) bands above 10 GHz --- where vast quantities of spectrum are available --- is a promising 5G candidate that may be able to rise to the occasion. However, while the mmWave bands can support massive peak data rates, delivering these data rates on end-to-end service while maintaining reliability and ultra-low latency performance will require rethinking all layers of the protocol stack. This papers surveys some of the challenges and possible solutions for delivering end-to-end, reliable, ultra-low latency services in mmWave cellular systems in terms of the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer, congestion control and core network architecture

Memory-full context-aware predictive mobility management in dual connectivity 5G networks

Network densification with small cell deployment is being considered as one of the dominant themes in the fifth generation (5G) cellular system. Despite the capacity gains, such deployment scenarios raise several challenges from mobility management perspective. The small cell size, which implies a small cell residence time, will increase the handover (HO) rate dramatically. Consequently, the HO latency will become a critical consideration in the 5G era. The latter requires an intelligent, fast and light-weight HO procedure with minimal signalling overhead. In this direction, we propose a memory-full context-aware HO scheme with mobility prediction to achieve the aforementioned objectives. We consider a dual connectivity radio access network architecture with logical separation between control and data planes because it offers relaxed constraints in implementing the predictive approaches. The proposed scheme predicts future HO events along with the expected HO time by combining radio frequency performance to physical proximity along with the user context in terms of speed, direction and HO history. To minimise the processing and the storage requirements whilst improving the prediction performance, a user-specific prediction triggering threshold is proposed. The prediction outcome is utilised to perform advance HO signalling whilst suspending the periodic transmission of measurement reports. Analytical and simulation results show that the proposed scheme provides promising gains over the conventional approach

Green Hybrid Satellite Terrestrial Networks: Fundamental Trade-Off Analysis

With the worldwide evolution of 4G generation and revolution in the information and communications technology(ICT) field to meet the exponential increase of mobile data traffic in the 2020 era, the hybrid satellite and terrestrial network based on the soft defined features is proposed from a perspective of 5G. In this paper, an end-to-end architecture of hybrid satellite and terrestrial network under the control and user Plane (C/U) split concept is studied and the performances are analysed based on stochastic geometry. The relationship between spectral efficiency (SE) and energy efficiency (EE) is investigated, taking consideration of overhead costs, transmission and circuit power, backhaul of gateway (GW), and density of small cells. Numerical results show that, by optimizing the key parameters, the hybrid satellite and terrestrial network can achieve nearly 90% EE gain with only 3% SE loss in relative dense networks, and achieve both higher EE and SE gain (20% and 5% respectively) in sparse networks toward the future 5G green communication networks