NETWORK TECHNOLOGY AND APPLICATIONS
Application Scenarios and Enabling
Technologies of 5G
YUAN Yifei, ZHU Longming
Next-generation Wireless Innovation Program, ZTE, 19 Huayuan Dong Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100191 P.R.China
Abstract: Fast growth of mobile internet and
internet-of-things has propelled the concept
formation and research on 5G wireless
communications systems which are to be
standardized around 2020 (IMT-2020). There
will be diverse application scenarios expected
for 5G networks. Hence, key performance
indicators (KPIs) of 5G systems would be
very diverse, not just the peak data rate and
average/edge spectral efficiency requirements
as in previous generations. For each typical
scenario, multiple technologies may be used
independently or jointly to improve the
transmission efficiency, to lower the cost,
and to increase the number of connections,
etc. Key enabling technologies are discussed
which include massive MIMO, ultra-
dense deployment specific techniques, non-
orthogonal transmission, high frequency
communications, etc.
Keywords: 5G, IMT-2020, ultra-dense
networks, massive MIMO, non-orthogonal
transmission
I. INTRODUCTION
The standardization of Long Term Evolution
(LTE) Release 10 was completed by 3GPP in
2011. It marked the full completion of basic
features of LTE-Advanced which truly fulfill
the ITU requirements for 4G. Over the last
four decades, almost every ten years, cellu-
69
lar communications would undergo a major
revamp—a new generation enters the stage.
The first generation was purely based on an-
alog communication using frequency domain
multiple access (FDMA). It began at about
early 1980s’ and lasted till early 1990s. The
second generation was mainly time division
multiple access (TDMA) based, represented
by the very successful GSM that debuted in
late 1980s. The third generation was featured
by code-division multiple access (CDMA) and
turbo codes. It standardization work started in
late 1990s and major specifications were com-
pleted around 2003. If this trend continues, it
is time to kick off the study on 5G and that it
why ITU already tag the name “IMT-2020”
[1] implying that the standardization work of
5G should be completed around 2020.
5G will be a global standard, similar to 4G
dominated by LTE-Advanced. Worldwide,
many countries and regions are already setting
up detailed plans for 5G study and promotion,
such as METIS project of Europe Union, IMT-
2020 of China, 5G Forum of Korea, ADWICS
of Japan. These projects and initiatives are
participated by wireless operators, manufac-
turers, terminal vendors, various research in-
stitutes and universities.
Unlike the previous four generations, user
requirements and application scenarios would
be much more diverse in 5G. The user peak
data rate and average cell spectral efficiency
China Communications • November 2014
are no longer the only requirements. Instead,
user experience rate, number of connections,
latency, high reliability, energy efficiency, etc.
are all part of metrics for the system design.
The application scenarios would not be limited
to wide area coverage, but also for dense hot
spots, machine-to-machine communications,
vehicle-to-vehicle communications, outdoor
big gathering, subway, and so on. Such diverse
scenarios indicate that technologies for 5G
will be multi-fold and cannot be represented
by a single dominant technology as for 1G~4G
systems.
Given the complicated scenarios and re-
quirements for 5G systems, there might be
many ways to group different technologies.
The classification may become more difficult
as some 5G-like technologies are already pro-
posed for study, or even considered for specifi-
cations in 3GPP Release 12 and Release 13. In
this sense, the boundary between evolutionary
path and revolutionary path is blurred for 5G.
In this paper, we use deployment scenario as
the clue to glue together different enabling
technologies of 5G. For each scenario, there
would be a few technical solutions/direc-
tions to fulfill the key performance indicators
(KPIs). The technologies discussed here would
by no means include all potential technologies
for 5G. Nevertheless, they do represent major
technology trends currently being discussed in
5G community.
The paper is organized as follows. 5G
scenarios and key performance indicators
are discussed in Section II. In Section III we
illustrate the scenario-technology clues for
different cases. Major technologies of 5G are
described in Section IV. The paper is conclud-
ed in Section V.
II. APPLICATION SCENARIOS AND KEY
PERFORMANCE INDICATORS FOR 5G
The study and the standardization of 5G sys-
tems will be driven by the market, by end us-
ers, by various applications and cellular opera-
tions. Among them, mobile internet and inter-
net-of-things are the main drivers in the next
China Communications • November 2014
ten years, as predicted by many major opera-
tors, manufacturers and consulting companies. 5G scenarios and key
Through the analysis of traffic characteristics performance indica-
of each application, user models and the com- tors are discussed in
Section II. Section III
position of each application in a deployment
illustrate the scenar-
scenario, key performance indicators (KPIs) io-technology clues
can be estimated for typical 5G scenarios, for different cases.
which would serve as important guidance for Major technologies of
the study on potential technologies. 5G are described in
Section IV.
2.1 Traffic types and characteristics
in 5G
For mobile internet users, optical-fiber like
data speed of use experience is the ultimate
design goal. For internet-of-things, 5G net-
works should satisfy a mixture of needs of dif-
ferent industries, for example, transportation,
medical, agriculture, finance, architecture,
electric power, environmental protection, etc,
with huge number of connections.
Figure 1 shows the major services of mo-
bile internet and internet-of-things, envisioned
for 5G systems.
For stream-type services, the data rate
requirement for un-compressed video of 8K
resolution (3D) would be 96 Gbps. With com-
pression (some processing delay incurred) by
100x, the data rate is still about 960 Mbps. For
conversion-type services, the delay has to be
within 50~100 ms. For interactive services,
the delay needs to be 5~10 ms, so small that
users would not be aware of it. Enhanced
reality and online gaming require frequent
interaction of high-definition video, meaning
that the systems have to provide high speed
communication both on the downlink and the
uplink. Cloud storage will be the major trend
and it is expected that 30% digital informa-
tion is expected to be stored in the “cloud” by
2020. This pushes the demand for fiber-speed
like wireless communication with rate close to
1Gbps, as well as the ultra high traffic density
in urban areas.
For internet-of-things, information-col-
lection type of services includes low speed
applications such as meter reading and high
speed applications for example video monitor-
ing. Meter reading is characterized by massive
70
 Major 5G
services

Mobile Internet-of-
of-
of
internet things

Data
Stream type Conversation Interactive Transport Message Control
collection

Audio-play Voice Browsing Emails SMS Low-rate Delay

data sensitive
Video-play Tele-video Positioning Download MMS High-rate Delay non-
data sensitive
Virtual reality Trading Upload OTT message

Searching

Gaming

Enh reality

Fig.1 Type of services envisioned for 5G

number of connections, low-cost of terminal, of 5G are more comprehensive than previous

low power consumption and a large number
of small packet transmissions. In video moni-
toring, uplink will be the bottleneck where the
data rate requirement is high. The traffic den-
sity of video monitoring systems is also high.
There are two families of control-type ma-
chine-to-machine communications: delay sen-
sitive and delay-non-sensitive. Vehicle-to-ve-
hicle communication is a typical example of
delay sensitive services where the latency
requirement is in the order of ms level. The re-
liability requirement is also very stringent, for
example, nearly 100% of successful decoding
at the speed about 300 km/h (considering the
relative velocity of opposite approaching vehi-
cles). Delay-non-sensitive services encompass
various applications of our daily living. The
challenge of these applications is in the huge
number of devices, and accordingly the num-
ber of connections.
2.2 Key performance indicators
(KPIs) of 5G
As mentioned in the introduction section, KPIs
generations. The notion is further reinforced
from the discussion in Section 2.1 where
diverse requirements of various services are
elaborated. Table I lists several KPIs.
In addition, efficiency requirements are also
part of the KPIs where three efficiencies are
defined. The average spectral efficiency is the
throughput per cell, or unit of area, e.g, bps/
Hz/cell, or bps/Hz/km2. The energy efficiency
is the number of information bits transmitted
per unit of energy, e.g., bits/J. The cost per bit
is the total cost for successfully transmitting
an information bit.
Since application scenarios and services
are highly coupled, we need to consider both
aspects when estimate the KPI requirements.
For 5G, nine typical scenarios can be identi-
fied, and in each scenario, there would be one
or several types of services. Total 14 service
types are envisioned in 5G: video-telephony,
video-conference, mobile online gaming, en-
hanced reality, virtual reality, live video shar-
ing, desk cloud, wireless data download, cloud
storage, high-definition image upload, OTT

71 China Communications • November 2014

Table I User experience for different scenarios
KPI Definition Unit Note
User achievable rate under the real loaded
User experienced rate bps Metric: 95-percentile throughput
systems
Traffic density Average traffic volume per unit area Gbps/km2 Measured in busy time, for typical area
“Online” means that a terminal device is en-
Total number of online devices supported
Density of connections #/ km2 gaged in traffic communication under certain
per unit area
QoS.
Assuming connection setup is completed. Respect to certain reliability, i.e., block error
Delay (end-to-end) ms
Data should be successfully decoded. rate
Under certain mobility model, satisfying
km/h for certain expe- Special scenarios: subway, highway, high speed
Mobility certain user experienced rate. The max ve-
rienced rate train
locity supported
User peak rate Single user max rate under ideal condition bps

message, video monitoring, intelligent house- It is another transportation-related scenario

hold control, vehicle-to-vehicle safe driving.
The relation between nine typical scenarios
and fourteen services are as follows:
• Dense residential area
It is the only residential related scenario
where relevant services include video telepho-
ny, IPTV, virtual reality for shopping, online
gaming, data download, cloud storage, OTT
message and intelligent household.
• Offices
It is the only work related scenario where
we see three typical services: two-party or
multi-party video telephony, desk cloud, data
download and cloud storage.
• Shopping mall
It is one of scenarios for leisure. Typical
services are enhanced reality, OTT message
and video monitoring.
• Sport stadium
It is another type of leisure-related scenar-
io. Video playing, enhanced reality/live video
sharing, high-definition picture upload and
OTT messages are the major services.
• Big outdoor gathering
It is also a type of leisure-related scenario.
The service types are very similar to the case
of sport stadium.
• Subway system
In this scenario related to public transporta-
tion, on-board users are most interested in vid-
eo playing, online gaming and OTT message.
• Train station
where video-telephony, video playing, online
gaming and OTT messages are the major ser-
vices.
• Highway
In-vehicle users on highway would typical-
ly engaged in video-telephony, video playing
and enhanced reality. They also rely on vehi-
cle-to-vehicle network to improve the safety
of driving.
• High-speed train
Video-telephony and video playing are the
two major telecom services for passengers on
high-speed trains.
Assuming certain models for each service
and user distributions, KPIs for typical scenar-
ios can be estimated and the values are listed
in Table II.
III. SCENARIOS AND TECHNOLOGIES
As elaborated in previous section, require-
ments and services of 5G are of diverse na-
ture, which is quite different from previous
generations. Nevertheless, several KPIs are
now widely accepted for 5G. They are: 1) user
experienced rate up to 100 Mbps for outdoor
and 1 Gbps for hot spots; 2) 10~100x im-
provements in density of connections and total
number of connections; 3) air interface delay
less than 1 ms and end-to-end delay in the or-
der of ms, as illustrated in Figure 2.
Use scenarios identified in previous section

China Communications • November 2014 72

Table II KPIs for different scenarios
Traffic den- User ex- Traffic vol-
Density of Total number
sity End-to-end perienced Mobility ume in typi-
Scenario connections Typical area of connections
(bps/km2, delay (ms) rate (Mbps, (km/h) cal area (bps,
(#/km2) in typical area
DL/UL) DL/UL) DL/UL)
Dense apart-
Residential 3.2T /130G 106 10~20 1024/512 - 1 km2 3.2T /130G 106
ment
500~ 7~14G/
Work Office 15T/2T 750,000 20 1024/512 - 375~750
1000 m2 1~2G
Shopping
120G /150G 160,000 5~10 15/60 - 0.24 km2 29G /36G 38,000
mall
Leisure Stadium 800G /1.3T 450,000 5~10 60/60 - 0.2 km2 160G /260G 90,000
Outdoor gath-
800G /1.3T 450,000 5~10 60/60 - 0.44 km2 352G /572G 198,000
ering
Subway 10T/- 6(106) 10~20 60/- 110 410 m2 6.2G/- 2500
Train station 2.3T /330G 1.1(10 ) 6
10~20 60/15 - 9000 m 2
21G /3G 10,000
Transpor-
Highway - - <5 60/15 180 - - -
tation
High-speed
1.6T /500G 700,000 50 15/15 500 1500 m2 2.4G /0.75G 1000
train

are useful for 5G system design. Yet, from
technology point of view, some reorganization
is needed to better align the scenarios and
technologies. In Figure 2, four scenarios are
listed: macro coverage enhancements scenario,
ultra dense networks scenario, M2M scenario,
and low-latency high-reliability scenario. Also
listed are a number of enabling technologies:
massive MIMO, non-orthogonal transmis-
sion, techniques for ultra-dense deployment,
high-frequency communications, full-duplex,
new coding and modulation, D2D, etc. In the
following, for each scenario we discuss possi-
ble enabling technologies.
• Macro coverage enhancements scenar-
io:
For coverage consideration, low frequency
band is more likely for coverage enhance-
ments for macro deployment whose cell radius
can be several km. In addition, user experience
requirement is also quite challenging, e.g., 100
Mbps, which means that basic coverage is not
enough, i.e., high data rate at cell edges is also
required. The characteristics of this scenario
are as follows. Pathloss disparity exists be-
tween users in different geometries. The area
size for multi-antenna installment is relatively
abundant. The number of connections, even
counting only the human-to-human communi-
cations, is relatively large, given the wide area
served by a macro station. Suitable technolo-
gies are massive MIMO [2], non-orthogonal
transmissions, and new coding and modula-
tion. These technologies are supposed to well
co-exist, e.g., the gains from each technology
may be added up when being used together, as
long as the configurations are done properly.
• Ultra dense deployments:
Many application scenarios identified in
previous section, for example, office, dense
urban apartments, shopping mall, big out-
door gathering, stadium, etc, are all dense
deployment related. The user experienced rate
requirement is very challenging, e.g., 1 Gbps.
This scenario is characterized by very dense
user distribution over typical area. Users can
be either indoor or outdoor. Cell topology
is highly heterogeneous, containing macro
cells, micro cells, pico cells, relay nodes, fem-
to cells, etc, each with drastically different
coverage sizes, transmitting powers, antenna
gains and antenna height. Dense deployment
technologies include advanced interference
coordination/management, cell virtualization,
wireless backhaul, new coding and modu-
lation, content based multi-connections, en-

73 China Communications • November 2014

 Major KPIs Key scenarios

User • Outdoor: ~ 100 Mbps Macro coverage

experienced • Hotspot: ~ 1 Gbps
rate
Ultra dense
deployments
Density of • Improved by 10~100 x
connections • Total # connections
improved by 10-100x M2M scenario

Low-latency,
Latency • Air-interface: 1ms
high reliability
• End-to-end: ms level
scenario

Key technologies
Massive Dense deployment- Non-orthogonal New coding &
MIMO specific tech transmission modulation

High frequency
D2D Full-duplex FBMC
communications

Fig.2 Major KPIs and enabling technologies for 5G

hanced self-organized network (e-SON), etc.
For indoor deployment, high frequency com-
munications are also effective in improving
the user experience and reducing the inter-cell
interference. With very short wavelengths in
high frequency bands, multi-antennas, or even
massive MIMO may be possible on low power
node, in terms of size and the cost.
• Machine-to-machine communications
scenario:
The most challenging requirement in this
scenario is to support a massive number of
devices. This means that the cost per terminal
should be significantly lower than mobile de-
vices. The power consumption has to be low
enough so that devices can be battery-powered
for years without recharging. Also the cover-
age should be robust enough so that devices
deep inside the basements can connect to the
network. Enabling technologies for M2M are:
narrow-band techniques, control signaling
optimization, non-orthogonal transmission.
Narrow-band transmission can effectively
reduce the device cost and improve the cover-
age. Control signaling optimization can reduce
signaling overhead when a large number of
devices connect to the network. Non-or-
thogonal transmission allows multiple users
simultaneously accessing the network in the
same frequency resources. The access can be
contention based, thus significantly reducing
the control overhead for granting the resource
and indicating the transmission format. D2D
can be used for vehicle-to-vehicle communi-
cations which are a important use case in ma-
chine-to-machine communications.
• Low-latency and high-reliability sce-
nario:
Low latency and high-reliability is a re-
quirement for several applications, for exam-
ple machine-to-machine communication in
some manufacturing industry where more than
several ms of delay would significantly de-
grade the product quality and thus simply not
tolerable. For intelligent transportation sys-
tems, ms level of latency and nearly zero de-
tection error are the hard benchmark in order
to prevent accidents from happening. Enabling

China Communications • November 2014 74

 technologies are new physical channel design
to reduce the delay of single transmission, the
number of HARQ retransmissions, advanced
link adaptation schemes. End-to-end delay can
also be reduced by using D2D.
IV. ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES
As shown in Figure 2, there are a number of
technologies potentially for different scenarios
of 5G. In this section we pick several key en-
abling technologies and discuss each in length.
They are massive MIMO, techniques for ultra
dense network deployments, non-orthogonal
transmission, high-frequency communications.
4.1 Massive MIMO
Multi-antenna is a classic topic in standard-
ization since 3G. To a large extent, this is
facilitated by OFDM in 4G. The much sim-
pler processing at the receiver compared to
coded-division multiple access makes MIMO
an attractive and effective way in improving
both the peak rate and system capacity of
cellular networks. The ground-breaking pa-
per by Marzetta [1] opens a new opportunity
to release the full potential of multi-antenna
systems, via massive number of antennas only
at the base station, without increasing the
Massive
antenna array
Side lobe of
3D beam
Main lobe of
Macro base
3D beam
station
Fig.3 Massive MIMO
75
number of antennas at the terminal. At least
from theory, as the number of antennas goes
to infinity, the system performance would only
be limited by the pilot pollution, whereas the
effect of thermal noise diminishes to zero.
While the original concept of massive
MIMO does not explicitly indicate whether
the antennas are one dimensional or two di-
mensional, the fast development of antenna
implementation is now able to support active
antenna element, to dynamically form a beam
also in vertical domain and the tilt angle,
as illustrated in Figure 3. This so called 3D
MIMO is believed to provide better coverage
and improved throughput when users are dis-
tributed in multiple floors in medium to high-
rise buildings in dense urban deployments. In
this sense, massive MIMO and 3D MIMO are
closely related, both requiring a big number of
antenna elements or antenna ports installed at
the base station.
Some preliminary study was carried out to
estimate the system performance when base
station has more than 8 antennas. The initial
downlink simulation result is shown in Figure
4. The simulation assumes 19 site (57 cells)
homogeneous cell layout, with the site-to-site
distance being 200 m. Channel estimation and
channel state information (CSI) feedback are
Terminal at high
elevations
Main lobe of
3D beam
Terminal at low
elevations
China Communications • November 2014
 Spectral efficiency vs. number of Tx antennas
14
12
10
8
6.95
bps/Hz
6
4.53
4
0
Tx=8 Tx=16
Number of transmit antennas
Fig.4 Spectral efficiency of downlink massive MIMO system
assumed ideal, with little overhead for refer-
ence signals. It is observed that as the number
of antennas is increased to 64, the spectral
efficiency can be improved by nearly 3 times
compared to 8-antenna case.
There are a number of challenges when de-
signing massive MIMO systems:
1) As the number of antennas increases,
more resources are needed for reference signal
in general, in order to estimate each individual
channel. A good trade-off is needed between
reference signal overhead and the system per-
formance;
2) Massive MIMO also means that CSI
feedback requires a large number of bits so
that the transmitter can have enough detailed
information about the channel and then effec-
tively perform the precoding and scheduling.
This is especially crucial for FDD system
where channel reciprocity generally does not
hold. In the case of TDD where channel reci-
procity can be used to reduce the reliance on
CSI feedback, antenna calibration is still need-
ed, perhaps with higher accuracy requirement,
to ensure the accurate knowledge of CSI at the
transmitter;
3) Unless at very high frequencies, the
China Communications • November 2014
12.13
9.58
Tx=32 Tx=64
sheer number of antennas with massive
MIMO would significantly limit the deploy-
ment choices. It has to meet the zone regula-
tions and fulfill some anesthetic requirement.
Sometimes, irregular shape of antenna plane
is inevitable, whose characteristics are still not
well known, either in terms of shadow fading
consistency and detailed implementation spe-
cific issues;
4) High frequency operation can dramati-
cally reduce the size of antennas, thus allow-
ing more flexible deployment choices. Howev-
er, the device cost associated with high-band
communications would require more careful
design to make massive MIMO really feasible.
4.2 Techniques for ultra dense
deployments
Homogeneous deployments have been the
norm from the first generation of cellular
to the third generation. In 4G, especially
LTE-Advanced, we see the advent of heteroge-
neous deployments where macro base stations
and low power nodes such as pico, femto,
relay, coexist to improve the system capacity,
as illustrated in Figure 5. The capacity im-
provement is primarily from the cell-splitting
76
 gain, e.g., low power nodes (LPN) offload the
traffic previously handled only by macro base
stations, both operating in the same band. The
inter-node interference between LPNs may not
be that serious as long as the density of LPNs
is not high. The interference issue between
macro and LPNs is partially solved by the
technologies already standardized in LTE Rel-
10 and Rel-11.
In 5G, the scenarios of dense deployment
have more flavors, as already described in pre-
vious section. Evaluation methodology used
for 4G systems would not be enough to cap-
ture the diverse scenarios, new models may
be needed. More specifically, instead of using
19-site (57 cells) homogeneous layout with
the small hot-spot areas on the top, multiple
prototype scenarios may be defined, for exam-
ple, dense urban apartments, offices, shopping
mall, stadium, each from a typical deployment
taken from real field measurement. The chan-
nel model does not only capture the 2D terrain
information, but also 3D view of the relative
position of each propagation related objects
which is important when the density of cells is
very high.
As the density of LPNs increases and each
LPN’s coverage gets smaller, interference
issue would become more serious [3]. A few
ultra-dense specific solutions may be consid-
ered:
1) Enhanced power control and adaptation,
almost blank subframe for multi-cell scenario
LTE Rel-9/10 Rel-11 Rel-12
HetNets (eICIC, FeICIC, Dual-
relay) ePDCCH connectivity
2009/1 2011/6 2012/9 2014/9
Macro cell,
r=300 m
Pico/relay node Small cells,
r=50 m r=50m, denser
Fig.5 Migration to ultra-dense deployment
77
targeting both for data and control
2) Enhanced measurement of interference
3) Coordinated scheduling, jointly over
time, frequency, spatial and power.
4) Interference-alignment based interfer-
ence coordination
5) Wireless backhaul
4.3 Non-orthogonal transmission
One key advantage of 4G OFDM system is the
relatively simple receiver implementation due
to the orthogonal resource allocation, especial-
ly for MIMO. However, from sum-capacity
point of view, orthogonal systems are never
the capacity achieving schemes as seen in Fig-
ure 6. The sub-optimum nature of orthogonal
systems is more pronounced when signal to
noise ratios (SNRs) of co-scheduled users are
significantly different.
The simplest form of non-orthogonal trans-
mission is the direct superposition of modu-
lation symbols of multiple users. Such pow-
er-domain scheme has relatively less impact
on the current standards, and many of them
would be implementation specific especially
for uplink. However, it requires full-blown
successive interference cancellation (SIC) at
the receiver that can be a serious issue for mo-
bile terminals.
More advanced non-orthogonal transmis-
sion schemes would take advantage of certain
code structures to either reduce the receiver
complexity or improve the system robustness
Super dense
r=25m
China Communications • November 2014

Fig.6 Downlink sum-rate comparison between orthogonal and non-orthogonal multiple access
when resource collisions occur, or provide
more flexibility in pairing the users for simul-
taneous transmissions. They are:
1) Spread sequence based. The sequences
have low cross correlation to facilitate SIC at
the receiver. Very suitable for uplink conten-
tion based, without grant
2) Sparse code based. Specially design
sparse code matrix to reduce the receiver com-
plexity. Improve the robustness to resource
collision. Suitable for uplink, grant free trans-
mission
3) Bit-division based [4]. Code-superpo-
sition at bit level. It can reduce the receiver
complexity of downlink, with potential gain
over power-domain direct superposition.
4.4 High frequency communications
Cellular systems so far primarily operate in
frequency bands between 400 MHz and 3
GHz. Given the scarcity of this range of spec-
trum and the huge capacity/data rate require-
ments for 5G, bands higher than 6 GHz are
likely to be used for future cellular commu-
nications, even though whether it can support
wide area coverage, or is only to be used for
indoor hot-spot is still in debate. For high fre-
quency communications, there are two issues
to be studied or well understood before physi-
cal and system designs can be carried out:
China Communications • November 2014
• The characteristics of propagation chan-
nel at high frequencies. While the channel
model for 3GHz or lower, which is actually
being used for 3G and 4G, may be reused
for frequency up to 6 GHz, the fundamental
propagation mechanism and electromagnetic
response of scatters may significantly be dif-
ferent when the operating frequency goes even
higher. There are some channel measurements
for point-to-point communication of milli-
meter wave. Nevertheless, most of them are
under line of sight (LOS) environment is far
from comprehensiveness and cannot capture
the radio propagation characteristics for gener-
al cellular scenarios. This work involves huge
amount of measurement efforts spanning over
a wide range of frequencies, from 10 GHz to
100 GHz. Also needed is the channel modeling
work, both for pathloss and large scale fading,
but also for small scale fading that includes
spatial channel model for MIMO schemes.
• Device cost and power efficiency. For
traditional point-to-point communication, for
example wireless backhaul that connects mac-
ro base stations in millimeter band, the cost
and power consumption are not major issues
considering the overall cost of a macro base
station which is hooked up to the power grid.
However for battery-power terminals whose
size is drastically smaller than base stations,
78
 device cost and power consumption should be
in reasonable so that high frequency operation
is really feasible. It is well known that the
device limitation normally would allow only
low order modulation due to various RF cir-
cuit noise, signal distortion, etc. The device or
material may be the ultimate bottleneck rather
than the physical layer technology itself.
There are a few technologies in high fre-
quency deployments that can be used to im-
prove the system performance and compensate
the shortcoming of high frequency communi-
cation.
1) Massive MIMO/3D MIMO. Short wave-
length of high frequency deployment shrinks
the dimension of antenna array, thus making
massive antenna deployment more feasible,
both from the size of installation and the cost.
More LOS component is expected in high
band, thus beamforming gain may be more
easily achieved.
2) New network topology. High frequency
wave is supposed to travel in short distance
and more prone to building penetration loss.
This good isolation property opens new op-
portunity for innovation topology for future
networks, especially in dense deployment.
V. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, services and application scenar-
ios of 5G were described. For each typical
scenario, we outline the key performance indi-
cators (KPIs), and the possible enabling tech-
nologies. Then, several major technologies
of 5G radio access networks were discussed:
massive MIMO, technologies specifically for
79
ultra-dense deployment, non-orthogonal trans-
mission, and high frequency communications.
References
[1] ITU, “IMT for 2020 and beyond”, http://www.
itu.int/en/ITU-R/study-groups/rsg5/rwp5d/imt-
2020.
[2] T. L. Mar zetta, “Noncooperative cellular
wireless with unlimited number of base station
antennas,” IEEE Trans. on Wireless Comm., Vol. 9,
No. 11, November 2010, pp 3590-3600.
[3] N. Bhushan, J. Li, D. Malladi, R. Gilmore, D.
Brenner, A. Damnjanovic, R. T. Sukhavasi, C.
Patel, and S. Geirhofer, “Network densification:
the dominant theme for wireless evolution in
5G,” IEEE Comm. Mag., February 2014, pp 82-89.
[4] H. Jin, K. Peng, J. Song, “Bit division multiplexing
for broadcasting,” IEEE Trans. on Broadcasting,
Vol. 59, No. 3, September 2013, pp 539-547.
Biographies
YUAN Yifei, received Bachelor and Master degrees
from Tsinghua University of China, and a Ph.D. from
Carnegie Mellon University, USA. He was with Al-
catel-Lucent from 2000 to 2008, working on 3G/4G
key technologies. Since 2008, he has been with ZTE,
responsible for standards research on LTE-Advanced
physical layer, and 5G technologies recently. His
research interests include MIMO, iterative codes, re-
source scheduling. He was admitted to Thousand Tal-
ent Plan Program of China in 2010. He has extensive
publications, including a book on LTE-A relay, and a
book on LTE-Advanced key technologies and system
performance. He has over 30 granted patents.
ZHU Longming, graduated from Nanjing University
in 1989. M.S. He joined ZTE Corporation in 1998, He
is chief technology officer on standardization in ZTE
Corporation and working on R&D for mobile tele-
communication system, advanced research and stan-
dardization for wireless broadband mobile. He is a
member of the expert group of National S&T Major
Project 3, and working on writing project guide and
plan, reviewing project application and examining
project progress.
China Communications • November 2014