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A Survey on 5G Emerging Technologies
Naveed Khan, Section A, Reg: 15JZELE0013
Abstract—The ever-increasing demand for higher data rates
have previously been the main target of cellular communication
technologies and as a result a tremendous advancement in
technologies from GPRS to LTE-Advanced have been witnessed
over the previous couple of decades. However due to the rapid
advancements in other areas of science and engineering such as
electronics, robotics, sensor technologies etc, the driving factors in
cellular communication are now changing. Alongside increasing
data rates factors such as ultra-low latency, seamless connectivity
between machines, mobility, spectral efficiency, coverage and
much more have now become factors of significant importance.
The upcoming generation of cellular communication (5G) claimed
to have taken care of the factors with state of the art technologies.
These include Radio Access Network (RAN) Centralization and
Virtualization, Massive MIMO, Millimeter Waves (mmWaves)
Communication, Ultra-Dense Networks (UDNs) and Network
Slicing. These advanced technologies and how they play their
role to make 5G achieve its targets are the topics surveyed in
this paper.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Advancements in cellular technologies over the past three
to four decades have completely revolutionized communi-
cation across the globe. Starting from purely analog first
generation (1G) voice only services back in eighties to the
completely digital fourth generation (4G) faster data services
have changed the lives of individuals upside down. Services
such as High Definition (HD) video streaming and confer-
encing, ever fast web browsing, ever growing social media
connectivity, machine to machine communication and much
more are common stories these days. However, things now in
telecom sector are changing. Demands from next generation
cellular networks are not just a slight increase in data rate
and a few variations in network architecture but much more.
Alongside enhanced mobile broadband enabling current trends
such as cloud computing and high-speed connectivity the ul-
trareliable low latency communications such as tactile internet,
vehicle to anything (V2X) and e-medicine are of significant
importance. The powerful idea of interconnecting various
connectable device commonly called Internet of Things (IoT)
has recently emerged and gained enormous popularity. The
wireless sensor networks are expanding on everyday basis
turning homes and cities to smart homes and smart cities.
Demands like the ones mentioned above and much more [1]
have long been predicted and that’s why the upcoming fifth
generation (5G) of cellular communication have claimed to
provide promising solutions to all of them. 5G through its
state of the art technologies have made it possible to meet the
challenges in its way. The purpose of this paper is to survey
the underlying technologies in 5G and provide an insight to
how they will fulfill the requirements. Beginning with RAN
Centralization and Virtualization the discussion then proceeds
Fig. 1. Fifth Generation of cellular communication.
with Massive MIMO, mmWave Communication, UDNs and
Network Slicing.
II. 5G E NABLING T ECHNOLOGIES
A. RAN Centralization and Virtualization
Recently machine type communications have seen tremen-
dous advancements. The number of devices in IoT and WSNs
are rising exponentially which indicate that the data rates
would also rise to phenomenal figures. As the current available
spectrum is already congested and can accommodate such
higher data rates. Thus, the communication engineers are now
focusing on a higher-end spectrum where a huge amount
of unused bandwidth lies. However, the higher frequencies
require small coverage areas as they don’t travel far and fad
out quickly. Which in turn implies a massive infrastructure of
base station transmitters and corresponding processing units
to be deployed. This would cause heavy cost burden thus
making it extremely inefficient to deploy. This makes the
current deployed procedures to be replaced with newer ones.
Cloud Radio Access Network (C-RAN) [2] is a centralized
RAN which significantly overcomes these limitations. C-RAN
architecture via utilizing the concept of network virtualization
could potentially handle any number of base station transmit-
ters as required by the network. In C-RAN via centralized
pool the channel processing is virtualized and is easily shared
amongst operators. Using the concept of centralization, the
data traffic could be handled in a more dynamic way and the
resources could be efficiently brought into use. Furthermore,
power consumption would also go down while adopting the
prescribed architecture. Another key parameter in C-RAN
is virtualization. Virtualization helps in logically isolating
resources where as the physical resources are shared in a
dynamically scalable environment. Storage, computing and
network are some of the resources in this regard which makes
virtualization critical in C-RAN architecture. In virtualization

Fig. 2. Cloud Radio Access Network
one same physical machine have multiple nodes deployed on
it which makes the control flexible and the overall structure
cost effective.
B. Massive MIMO
MIMO stands for Multiple Input Multiple Output. It’s a con-
cept which utilizes spatial diversity and spatial multiplexing
in a communication system via deploying multiple transmitter
and receiver antennas [3]. Any wireless channel imposes sev-
eral challenges to communication systems. One of the major
challenges is that of multipaths. When a transmitter transmits
a signal, the receiver doesn’t just receive a single copy of the
signal but multiple copies traveling through different paths.
Due to the difference in path lengths the multiple received
copies differ in phase and amplitude. The copies add up
giving rise to a phenomenon called Inter-Symbol-Interference
(ISI) which distorts the signal shape. MIMO systems could
turn this problem into an advantage via transmitting the same
signal through different antennas. The receiver receiving the
same signal separate copies through different antennas would
then have a diverse choice to make the decision and hence
would improve the detection accuracy. Another advantage
of MIMO system is of spatial multiplexing where multiple
antennas could be fed with different data streams on the
same radio channel hence increasing data rate. Initially MIMO
systems were just having 2 by 2, 4 by 4 or maximum of not
more than 10 antennas. However, later on in Massive MIMO
systems which have gained popularity recently the antenna
numbers could be increased to hundreds which dramatically
enhances the channel capacity. In 5G systems the concept of
Multi-User MIMO (MU-MIMO) is introduced where the base
station deploys as many antennas as the number of users thus
allocating one antenna per user on the same radio link. This
would not just improve the cell capacity but would also make
up for reducing the power consumption of the cell.
C. Millimeter Wave Communication
The mmWaves are referred to the region between 30 to
100 GHz (between infrared and microwave) in the spectrum.
Since the ever-increasing demand for capacity has caused a
severe congestion in the existing used spectrum (centimeter
waves) and the spectrum is now running out of capacity
2
Fig. 3. Mu-MIMO System
Fig. 4. Millimeter Wave Communication advantages
thus engineers have now turned their attention towards other
regions of the spectrum and have come up with the mmWaves
to combat the issue [4]. The mmWave region has never been
previously used for any sort of communication and thus has
an enormous amount of free bandwidth available which is
expected to enhance the data rates even up to the limits of
optical fiber. However, mmWaves have their own limitations
and must be dealt while designing systems for communication
in this region. One of the major limitations with mmWaves is
that they don’t travel far as compare to other waves and fads
out quickly while penetrating through obstacles. The reason is
because as the frequency of the radio waves increases they
tend to behave more like light and thus greatly attenuates
as they penetrate through solid objects. Moreover factors
like humidity, rain conditions etc also greatly affects their
propagation. Thus, now the communication systems won’t
have the luxury to communicate over long distances and would
require to operate in smaller regions. This would result in an
enormous increase in the base station transmitters since now
every small region would need to have a base station. However,
the data rates would experience an explosive increase and
would more come closer to the speed of optical fiber.
D. Ultra-Dense Networks (UDNs)
As described earlier about the exponential growing demand
of data rate especially with the introduction of IoT and ma-
chine to machine communication resulting in data explosion.
In order to meet the challenge of such fast-growing data rate
5G amongst other core techniques has heavily focused on
network densification [5]. Network densification via deploying
small powered cells (pico and femtocells) and reusing the same
frequency resources offer promising solutions in combating
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higher data rates. However, with increasing the number of

cells and communicating over the same set of frequencies
in close proximity would also give rise to high interference
between cells thus making distortion free communication
unable. The introduction of picocells would require high direc-
tional antennas and sophisticated beamforming techniques in
order to avoid interference from nearby cells. Another major
issue in deploying UDNs is that of the power consumption.
Managing the power of such huge architecture would be a
challenging task for power engineer to resolve. The problems
encountered in the data processing of each base station could
be handled via the concept of C-RAN as discussed earlier.
The technique C-RAN enables to have all the processing
performed at a centralized cloud thus reducing the introduction
of processing unit at every single location and virtualizing the
overall process. The concept of dual connectivity could further
boost UDNs architectures since the introduction of a low
frequency master base station transmitter for control signaling
Fig. 5. Ultra-Dense Network
and multiple slave base station for data capacity perfectly
suits the concept. Cells that have no active users could be
switched off temporarily. Other core UDNs enabling include
Introduction of Massive MIMO and mmWave communication.
Massive MIMO and beamforming strategy could really boost
the data rates to the level required and beyond. It further
would help in reducing the interference and providing a
reliable, highly efficient seamless connectivity. With utilizing
the mmWave spectrum which has been unused until now
would greatly solve the problem of spectrum congestion. It
is believed that with mmWave communication the data rates
could be made fast enough to come closer to the current optical
fiber speeds. Another advantage of mmWaves comes from the
fact that the waves in this region does not travel too far and
Fig. 6. Network Slicing
die out quickly. At first it might seem a problem but then
realizing the very nature of UDNs it could be turned into an
advantage since UDNs require the waves not to travel too far and would not be affected much by latency. Now both of these
and cause interference with other cells. With emerging concept services have to be provided on the same physical network.
of IoT turning the world into a smart world also perfectly Thus, with the help of network slicing virtual networks would
fits in UDN architecture. Since IoT devices are growing at have to be created which would make up for both the services
an exponential rate, such huge networks would require an on the same network. Another example is that of supporting
infrastructure which efficiently manage each node and provide mobile broad band and IoT. In IoT applications there happens
seamless connectivity to the across the globe. to be an enormous number of nodes each of which has a
very low throughput but requires seamless connectivity. On
E. Network Slicing the other hand, in mobile broad band applications the story
is totally opposite where the overall number of mobile broad
The technique of creating various virtual networks based on band devices might be low but each of them require a very
some shared physical infrastructure is referred to as network high throughput. 5G would be required to accommodate both
slicing [6]. The created multiple virtual networks could then of these services on the same laid physical architecture. Since
be customized to fulfill the requirements of several different the nature of demand is different thus a virtual network needs
applications. The diversity of the services supported by the to be created on top of the physical infrastructure which would
5G makes network slicing to play a very critical role. The account for both of the services. Network slicing thus would
different services would impose different conditions and would play a vital role in 5G and has become one of the core enabling
require different functionality to be performed from the same technology for it.
physical network. For instance, in the area of autonomous
cars based upon V2X communication which requires ultra-
low latency and would not care much about data rate since to R EFERENCES
avoid accidents the cars are required to receive the signal and
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