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5G Systems: The Mmmagic Project Perspective On Use Cases and Challenges Between 6-100 GHZ
5G Systems: The Mmmagic Project Perspective On Use Cases and Challenges Between 6-100 GHZ
Ericsson Research, EAB, 2IMDEA Networks Institute, 3Intel Deutschland GmbH, 4Telefónica I+D, 5Chalmers University of
1
Technology, 6Orange, 7Nokia Networks, 8Fraunhofer HHI, 9University of Bristol, 10Samsung Electronics (UK), 11Huawei
Technologies Duesseldorf GmbH
Abstract
mmMAGIC (Millimetre-Wave Based Mobile Radio Access Network for Fifth Generation Integrated Communications) is
an EU funded 5G-PPP project, whose overall objective is to design and pre-develop a mobile radio access technology
(RAT) operating in the 6-100 GHz range, capable of impacting standards and other relevant fora. The focus of the project
is on extreme Mobile Broadband, which is expected to drive the 5G requirements for massive increase in capacity and
data-rates. This paper elaborates on some 5G key research areas such as: identification of the most compelling use-cases
and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for future 5G systems, advantages and challenges of millimeter-wave (mmWave)
technologies, channel measurements and channel modeling, network architecture; and the design of a new mobile radio
interface including multi-node and multi-antenna transceiver architecture.
Index Terms: 5G system, mmWaves, use cases, channel modeling, RAT, 5G architecture.
Over the past few years, the number of mobile devices per The Millimetre-Wave Based Mobile Radio Access
user has significantly increased: mobile phones, tablets, Network for Fifth Generation Integrated Communications
etc. In parallel, the capabilities of these equipment have (mmMAGIC) project [2][3] has the mission to design and
also been improved in order to process more and more develop a concept for a mobile radio access technology
data: video with gradually increasing resolutions (Single (RAT) operating in mmWave bands, which is expected to
Definition, High Definition, 4K), cloud applications, etc. be an integral part of the 5G multi-RAT ecosystem.
Estimations of the growth for the overall mobile data mmMAGIC will focus on xMBB use, expected to drive
traffic have been conducted and forecast an increase of at the 5G requirements for massive increase in capacity and
least 6500 PetaBytes/month by 2017─ a 7-fold increase data-rates.
over 2013 [1]. Mobile communication systems should
evolve to satisfy this tremendous increase in capacity by In this paper, mmMAGIC presents a selection of use cases
2020 and beyond. that will be key representatives of the project focus areas,
with the objective to illustrate ultra-high deployment and
The requirements for the fifth generation of mobile capacity. Spectrum suitability and main challenges in the
communications (5G) are multi-fold, and future extreme pre-development of such new mobile RAT are also
Mobile Broadband (xMBB) systems should not only meet discussed. This paper is organized as follows: Section II
the significant requirements for capacity increase, but also provides a brief overview of existing studies on use cases,
address the needs for higher user data rates (up to 10 Gbps Section III describes mmMAGIC use cases, Section IV
for services such as 3D immersive user experience and presents the main technical challenges to be tackled in the
telepresence on mobile devices). Another key requirement mmMAGIC project, and finally section V summarized the
for 5G is reduced latencies. Some services, such as conclusions.
interactive applications and ultra-responsive mobile cloud-
services, will demand end-to-end latencies as low as 1 ms.
And the user should benefit from an improved and
most likely to be in deense urban traaffic hot-spots,, with to bbe available evverywhere. Theerefore, 50 Mbbps should be
mmWave small cellss. The earlyy adopters would w undderstood as thee minimum useer data rate andd not a single
particularlly want to benefit from m the imm mersive useer’s theoretical peak rate. Furrthermore, it iss emphasized
multimediia experience pprovided by 5G G services, inclluding that this user data rate has to be delivered consistently
4k/8k ultrra high definittion (UHD) vvideo, virtual reality
r acrross the coverage area (i.e. evven at cell edgee). We argue
and real time mobile gaming expeeriences. Thesse 5G that the comprehhensive answer to this issuee lies in the
experiences should com me with a pallpable improvement avaailability of new
w spectrum toggether with thee deployment
from the Q QoE the users would get froom the (then) llegacy of uultra-dense nettworks.
4G services. Deploymennts such as Ouutdoor to Indooor, and
Indoor too Indoor havee to be conssidered. The dense
deployment of small cells
c and the limited mobility of G. Moving Hott Spots
users studdied under this use case will create opportuunities
for multiuuser; distributeed multiple innput multiple ooutput In the future theere will be a growing dem mand for the
(MIMO) antenna solutioons. It can alsso bring in com mplex brooadband mobbile communnication withh different
interference managemennt issues. Cooordinated multtipoint reqquirements. W We can distingguish differennt use cases
(CoMP) or beyond CoMP-type ddynamic mullti-cell deppending on thhe required deegree of mobillity: moving
coordinatiion can be creeated to optim mize different KPIs. croowds (e.g., movving mass evennts), moving veehicles (cars,
The preseence of underlaay legacy cellss operating in llegacy busses, etc.), high speed trains annd even aircraffts. We focus
RATs cann bring more sttability to the CoMP sets; buut can on high speed trrains and moving vehicles (cars, buses).
also creaate challengess in accommodating Multii-RAT Froom the services perspectivee we focus oon access to
solutions. moobile broadband networks foor in-vehicle eentertainment
andd Internet services.
s Thee advanced navigation,
autonomous drivving and safetyy features aree out of the
F. 50+ M
Mbps everyw
where prooject scope because theyy are characcterized by
A consisteent user experience is expecteed from 5G sysstems, commpletely diffeerent sets of requirements.. The main
which trannslates into thee provision of a uniform highh data chaallenge here iss represented by the high sspeed that is
rate, or w
what is termedd in ibid: “Thhe edgeless R RAN”. foreeseen to reach up to 500 km/hh.
While thee projected edgge data rates vaary from 50Mbbps [4]
to 1Gbpss [14], theree is consenssus [15] thatt this H. Tactile interrnet, remote
e surgery
requiremeent (delivering high rates eveen at cell edgee) will
form an inntegral part of 55G. Thee advent of improved telle-control techhniques and
NGMN, when
w defining this use case [44], indicates thhat the assisted manipulaation of objeccts, have benefited several
mobile annd connected soociety will neeed broadband access
a inddustries from thhe possibility too perform mannipulations in
remmote and securre places insteaad of in-situ. UUltra reliable
connectivity in ultra-low latency (very few ms irrespective GHz spectrum with up to 4 GHz bandwidth. The
of the channel conditions) for extreme real time campaigns will include multi-frequency measurements in
communication can be foreseen in applications such as the same environment and study time and polarization
remote driving or flying of unmanned vehicles, robotic dependent effects. The chosen propagation scenarios are:
control, remote health, remote augmented reality etc. This street canyon, outdoor to indoor, open square (plaza),
gives rise to several interesting yet highly challenging use office, shopping mall, airport, stadium and subway. The
cases, among which “Tactile internet” and “remote measurements will be accompanied by map-based
surgery” are perhaps the most representative ones. It is simulations using ray tracing and point-cloud models. This
important to aim for near error-free transmission with a hybrid approach is expected to reveal additional
maximum packet loss rate below 0.01%. There is no way information about the channel, while relying on a solid
to actually fulfill these requirements and KPIs with current basis of measurements.
state of the art technologies. Fundamental changes to
RATs and associated numerology are required, as well as B. Architecture and Integration
a significant simplification of the network architecture to
reduce latency to the minimum. Regarding the A smooth integration of mmWave technologies in 5G
propagation environment, indoor and outdoor media has to networks brings about a range of challenges and requires
be considered, as a maximum distance between transmitter changes to existing mobile network architectures, or even
and receiver should not be greater than 100 m; so as not to the introduction of entirely new architectures. In this
compromise latency; therefore deployments would likely project we consider three possible deployment scenarios
be indoors. for mmWave technologies: mmWave non-standalone
operation (supported by lower frequency technologies),
mmWave standalone operation, and mmWave as an
enabler for other technologies. For efficient and seamless
4. mmMAGIC Technological integration, each scenario implies a set of general
challenges for the physical, medium access layer (MAC)
Challenges and network layers; as well as other complex issues which
The use of high frequency bands, including mmWave, depend on the specific scenario.
brings new technological challenges in different focus
areas of the mmMAGIC project. In the following sections, An efficient joint use of mmWave and lower frequency
these challenges are briefly explained from different technologies requires a careful design of how to split
aspects, namely: channel modeling, architecture and network functionalities over the different radio
integration, radio interface design, and multi-antenna. technologies; for example by moving control traffic
primarily to the lower frequencies (which provide better
coverage), whilst keeping data traffic at mmWave
A. Channel modeling frequencies as much as possible. Low frequency
Over the last decade, there has been a substantial technologies could be used to cover mmWave coverage
investment in channel measurement campaigns for cellular gaps and provide support for smoother handover to enable
access communications in the frequency bands below 6 seamless service to the mobile users. Non-standalone
GHz. It yielded a number of reference channel models operations are also faced with the important issues of
including 3GPP-SCM [16], WINNER [17] and COST optimum spacing and arrangement of multiple mmWave
2100 [18]. However, at frequencies above 6 GHz, base stations in the operating region of low frequency cells.
propagation characteristics and antenna designs change Furthermore, the exchange of information between the
markedly. There is still a considerable knowledge gap due low frequency and mmWave frequency nodes, and the
to the challenging nature of making channel measurements prospect to harmonize with low frequency technology
in the mmWave band over longer distances, and then network layers are two issues that need to be addressed.
deriving the required information for a suitable 3D
channel model for mobile access environments. Standalone operation will be considered as an additional
RAT integrated with other legacy RATs or 5G systems.
A key ambition of mmMAGIC is to close this gap and This may lead to deployment and coordination issues. The
develop advanced channel models that are valid above 6 base stations will have to be optimized to provide good
GHz and go beyond existing models. The main targets for coverage and deal with mobility issue due to the mmWave
such enhanced models are to support frequency agility, propagation characteristics. The smaller cell sizes and the
accommodate 3D antenna patterns and incorporate time- highly directional antenna beams increase the occurrence
varying parameters associated with access environments; of handovers. Hence, base station coordination and
such as blockages. To achieve this, six mmMAGIC terminal multi-connectivity may be required.
partners will pool their capabilities and conduct around
twenty measurement campaigns using different types of For enabling other technologies, mmWave technologies
channel sounder, in frequency bands across the 6–100 may be used to provide high capacity back/fronthaul links
as well as access link. While the different links may or standalone deployments, leading to challenges in initial
may not operate on the same frequency bands; challenges access and control signaling. Accordingly, self-
in terms of reliability, capacity, latency and connection backhauling capabilities (where the same RI is used for
dynamics will always surface. For example: self- both access and backhaul/fronthaul operation) may have to
backhauling at mmWave frequencies requires an efficient be considered in ultra-dense networks. Finally, uncertainty
resource allocation mechanism to allocate the frequency in the finally released frequency bands may demand
resources to the backhaul and access links. different approaches for the above described challenges,
thereby making RI design even more challenging.
C. Radio Interface Design
The use of mmWave technologies imposes specific D. Multi-Antenna Challenges
challenges to the radio interface (RI), compared to sub-6 Multiple-antennas at both transmitter and receiver side
GHz frequencies. First, link budget constraints resulting will be crucial to meet the performance targets of
from smaller antenna aperture in free space at higher RF mmMAGIC test cases. mmMAGIC will perform a holistic
frequencies lead to the need for multiple-antenna investigation of various multi-antenna solutions from a
transmitters and/or receivers, and the corresponding UE and infrastructure perspective for access, backhaul and
directional transmission. Directional transmission can fronthaul communications in different deployment
change the effective channel characteristics and other scenarios and use cases. To this end, mmMAGIC will
system characteristics, e.g. interference characteristics develop very large antenna array multi-antenna transceiver
leading to different requirements and design principles of technologies that can support the envisioned mmMAGIC
RI development. Second, as observed in recent system architecture and RI concepts at mmWave carrier
measurement campaigns [19][20], the number of path frequencies.
clusters as well as the angular spread of each cluster can
be small. Moreover, reflection becomes dominant while Innovative multi-node and multi-antenna transceiver
refraction and diffraction become much weaker. When components, including RF antennas, will be investigated
users are moving, mmWave links suffer from and developed. Beamforming at both transmitter and
blocking/shadowing as well as strong Doppler. Such receiver side will form a fundamental framework for the
different channel characteristics pose new challenges but multi-node and multi-antenna transceiver design. To this
also provide new opportunities for RI design, e.g. end, we will investigate adaptive beam steering, adaptive
waveforms, frame structure, retransmission schemes etc. beam tracking, spatial multiplexing, transceivers robust
against hardware imperfections, channel state information
In addition to channel aspects, critical Radio Frequency (CSI) and interference acquisition and
(RF)/hardware impairments that increase with carrier cooperative/coordinated transceivers.
frequency must be taken into account; such as phase noise,
the in-phase and quadrature phase (I/Q) imbalance, The objective is to achieve enhanced coverage that can
sampling jitter, sampling frequency offset, carrier mitigate severe signal blockage and coverage holes, an
frequency offset, Power Amplifier (PA) nonlinearity etc. edgeless user experience and seamless mobility. Thus, all
Such impairments can lead to increased Error Vector schemes will be designed to take into account mobility
Magnitude (EVM) and reduced spectral efficiency. Due to and diverse propagation conditions, building on the
lower efficiency of PA’s at mmWave frequencies, further channel measurements and modelling work in terms of
constraint is put on the link budget. channel characteristics (e.g., Doppler spread) in the
Moreover, the expected use of wider bandwidths leads to presence of highly directive transmission/reception. Key
high processing requirements, e.g. for channel decoding, characteristics of the radio interface design, such as
increasing both hardware costs and energy consumption. waveforms, will also be an important input to the design.
A further challenge is the use of hybrid transceiver mmMAGIC will derive novel processing power
architectures (with both analog and digital processing) to consumption models and hardware impairment models for
save hardware cost and power consumption. Such transceiver architectures that enable flexible evaluations of
architecture would have an impact on RF impairment the power consumption with different configurations, e.g
modelling as well as on specific aspects of the RI, e.g. the bandwidth, carrier frequency, antennas etc. We will also
initial access schemes. In addition, asymmetric antenna develop new channel quality indicators (CQI) and
and RF configurations in uplink (UL) and downlink (DL) interference acquisition schemes, as well as link-to-system
also affect RI design, e.g. by considering that UL coverage abstraction models for the developed transceivers.
will be constrained by the much lower transmitter power Thus, mmMAGIC will bring actual very large mmWave
and beamforming gains expected at the user equipment transceiver scheme designs to a new and more realistic
(UE). level than previous works in this field.