5G Physical Layer

Principles, Models and Technology Components

Ali Zaidi, Fredrik Athley, Jonas Medbo, Ulf Gustavsson, Giuseppe Durisi, Xiaoming Chen

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780128145791
• Topic: Informatik
• Subtopic: Computernetzwerke

5G Physical Layer: Principles, Models and Technology Components explains fundamental physical layer design principles, models and components for the 5G new radio access technology – 5G New Radio (NR). The physical layer models include radio wave propagation and hardware impairments for the full range of frequencies considered for the 5G NR (up to 100 GHz). The physical layer technologies include flexible multi-carrier waveforms, advanced multi-antenna solutions, and channel coding schemes for a wide range of services, deployments, and frequencies envisioned for 5G and beyond. A MATLAB-based link level simulator is included to explore various design options.

5G Physical Layer is very suitable for wireless system designers and researchers: basic understanding of communication theory and signal processing is assumed, but familiarity with 4G and 5G standards is not required.

With this book the reader will learn:

• The fundamentals of the 5G NR physical layer (waveform, modulation, numerology, channel codes, and multi-antenna schemes).
• Why certain PHY technologies have been adopted for the 5G NR.
• The fundamental physical limitations imposed by radio wave propagation and hardware impairments.
• How the fundamental 5G NR physical layer functionalities (e.g., parameters/methods/schemes) should be realized.

The content includes:

• A global view of 5G development – concept, standardization, spectrum allocation, use cases and requirements, trials, and future commercial deployments.
• The fundamentals behind the 5G NR physical layer specification in 3GPP.
• Radio wave propagation and channel modeling for 5G and beyond.
• Modeling of hardware impairments for future base stations and devices.
• Flexible multi-carrier waveforms, multi-antenna solutions, and channel coding schemes for 5G and beyond.
• A simulator including hardware impairments, radio propagation, and various waveforms.

Ali Zaidi is a strategic product manager at Ericsson, Sweden. Fredrik Athley is a senior researcher at Ericsson, Sweden. Jonas Medbo and Ulf Gustavsson are senior specialists at Ericsson, Sweden. Xiaoming Chen is a professor at Xi'an Jiaotong University, China. Giuseppe Durisi is a professor at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, and a guest researcher at Ericsson, Sweden.

Chapter 1

Introduction: 5G Radio Access

Abstract

5G mobile communication is expected to expand capabilities of the mobile networks enormously. Almost every society and industry is looking forward to the 5G revolution with its specific set of requirements, which makes the design of the 5G radio access challenging. 3GPP is currently developing a global standard for a new radio access technology, 5G new radio technology (NR). The 5G NR will unleash new frequencies and new functionalities to support ever-growing human-centric and machine-centric applications. This chapter introduces the 5G NR technology and gives an overview of the global efforts as regards its development and commercialization.

Keywords

5G mobile communication; 5G standardization; 5G spectrum; 5G use cases; 5G IoT; 5G requirements; 5G trials; 5G commercial deployments; ITU; 3GPP

Information and communication technologies (ICT) have sparked innovations in almost every society. The ever-growing capabilities for instantly transferring and processing information are transforming our societies in many ways—online shopping, social interactions, professional networking, media distribution, e-learning, instant information access, remotely watching live events, audio and video communication, virtual offices and workforce, and so on. Various industries and corporations have also been evolving their processes and businesses based on technological advancements in information and communication technologies.

Fifth generation (5G) mobile communication is expected to enormously expand the capabilities of mobile networks. New technologies and functionalities are being introduced for 5G systems in various domains—wireless access, transport, cloud, application, and management systems [6]. These advancements are targeting traditional mobile broadband users as well as emerging machine-type users, so that new and superior services can be enabled for both consumers and industries at large, unleashing the potential of the internet of things (IoT), and virtual and augmented reality. According to a recent survey performed across 10 different industries [4], the global revenues driven by 5G technologies will be as high as 1.3 trillion USD by 2026 (see Fig. 1.1 for revenues per industrial segment). It is estimated that by 2023, there will be around 3.5 billion cellular IoT connections [24].

Figure 1.1 5G enabled industry digitalization revenues for ICT players, 2026 (Source: Ericsson [4]).

The backbone of any mobile communication system is its wireless access technology, which connects devices with radio base stations. As almost every society and industry is looking forward to the 5G revolution with its specific set of requirements, the design of the 5G wireless access is challenging. A 5G wireless access technology is expected to provide extreme data rates, ubiquitous coverage, ultra-reliability, very low latency, high energy efficiency, and a massive number of heterogeneous connections. The human-centric emerging applications are augmented reality, virtual reality, and online gaming—these demand extreme throughput and low latency. For machine-type communication there are two main segments: massive IoT and critical IoT. Massive IoT is characterized by a high number of low cost device connections, supporting small volumes of data per device with long battery life and deep coverage (for example, for underground and remote areas). The applications are in smart buildings, utilities, transport logistics, agriculture, and fleet management. The critical IoT is characterized by ultra-reliability and very low-latency connectivity, for example, to support autonomous vehicles, smart power grids, robotic surgery, traffic safety, and industrial control.

This book is about the upcoming 5G wireless access technology, and it focuses on its physical layer. A preview of the book is provided in Section 1.4. This chapter gives a holistic view of the 5G wireless access technology and its global development. We start with a brief history of mobile access technologies in Section 1.1 and introduce the 5G mobile access technology in Section 1.2. In Section 1.3, we provide a global picture of 5G wireless access—spectrum allocations, standardization, use cases and their requirements, field trials, and future commercial deployments.

1.1 Evolution of Mobile Communication

In 1946, the US federal communications commission (FCC) approved a first mobile telephony service to be operated by AT&T in 1947. At this time, the equipment were bulky and had to be installed in a vehicle due to the weight and its excessive power consumption. From this point on, more than three decades of cellular communication technology evolution has led to a shift from analog to digital formats of communication, going from what was mainly voice to high-speed data communication.

Leading up from the mid-1980s, the first generation (1G) of cellular communication, which mainly carried voice, grew up using formats such as advanced mobile phone system (AMPS) in the USA and nordic mobile telephone (NMT) in Scandinavia. These analog formats were later replaced moving towards 2G with the first digital communication schemes around the mid to late-1990s—global system for mobile communications (GSM) in Europe and digital-AMPS for the USA. At this point, the short message service (SMS) was introduced, being one of the first widely used non-voice applications for cellular communication. Enhancement for 2.5G using enhanced data rates for GSM evolution (EDGE), general packet radio service (GPRS) and code division multiple access (CDMA) sparked the use of mobile data communication and early cellular internet connectivity in the early-2000s. This was an early enabler, which did, however, require a specific protocol, known as wireless application protocol (WAP).

Moving forward from 2G into 3G, in order to meet the increasing demand for cellular access data rates, universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) based on wideband CDMA (WCDMA) technology was introduced by third generation partnership project (3GPP) just around 2000. With advances in mobile user equipment technology, this enabled the user to not only communicate via multimedia message service (MMS), but also stream video content. Transitioning to 4G, long term evolution (LTE) was introduced, which does not only imply major changes on the air interface, but was moving from code division multiplexing to orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and time division duplex (TDD) or frequency division duplex (FDD).

Entering the era of 4G, there were mainly two competing technologies at an early stage. These were worldwide inter-operability for microwave access (WiMAX), based on IEEE 802.16m, and LTE Advanced, which is an extension of LTE. LTE-A introduced technology components such as carrier aggregation and improved support for coordinated multipoint (CoMP) transmission and heterogeneous network (HetNet) deployments for improving Quality of Service (QoS) in hot-spots and coverage for cell-edge users. LTE-A prevailed as the dominant cellular access technology today and has served as the basis of the transition to 5G mobile communications. The transition from 4G to 5G is inspired by new human-centric and machine-centric services across multiple industries.

1.2 5G New Radio Access Technology

5G wireless access is envisioned to enable a networked society, where information can be accessed and shared anywhere and anytime, by anyone and anything [2]. 5G shall provide wireless connectivity for anything that can benefit from being connected. To enable a truly networked society, there are three major challenges:

• • A massive growth in the number of connected devices.
• • A massive growth in traffic volume.
• • A wide range of applications with diverse requirements and characteristics.

To address these challenges, 5G wireless access not only requires new functionalities but also substantially more spectrum and wider frequency bands.

Fig. 1.2 illustrates the operational frequency ranges of existing (2G, 3G, 4G) and future (5G) mobile communication systems. The curren...