Waveform and Numerology to Support 5G Services and Requirements

TLDR

5G radio access technology is being standardized by 3GPP with a goal of commercial availability by 2020, featuring a wide range of carrier frequencies, diverse use cases, small base stations, self‑backhaul, massive MIMO, and large channel bandwidths. The article proposes a flexible physical layer for NR to meet 5G requirements. The authors propose a symmetric OFDM‑based physical layer for all link types and a scalable OFDM waveform to accommodate the wide range of carrier frequencies and deployments.

Abstract

The standardization of the next generation 5G radio access technology has just started in 3GPP with the ambition of making it commercially available by 2020. There are a number of features that are unique for 5G radio access compared to the previous generations such as a wide range of carrier frequencies and deployment options, diverse use cases with very different user requirements, small-size base stations, self-backhaul, massive MIMO, and large channel bandwidths. In this article, we propose a flexible physical layer for the NR to meet the 5G requirements. A symmetric physical layer design with OFDM is proposed for all link types, including uplink, downlink, device-to-device, and backhaul. A scalable OFDM waveform is proposed to handle the wide range of carrier frequencies and deployments.