A lead member of the technical staff for small cell platforms at AT&T, gave a presentation on the road to a 5G network as part of a workshop titled Small Cell Forum@SCWS: The Path to 5G Workshop at SCWS 2016. He mapped out some of the challenges associated with building the IoT, and how a 5G network needs to operate moving forward.
Network providers have several challenges to overcome when building for IoT. They need to provide:
Low-cost
Long battery life
Enhanced coverage
Scale
Narrowband and broadband
According to Chitrapu, there is more unknown than is known about 5G. He gave five dimensions to the up-and-coming network:
Enhanced mobile broadband – broadband on steroids
Throughputs of 5 gigabits per second
UHD video (4K, 8K)
VR and AR
Cloud gaming
Broadband kiosks,
Vehicular (cars, buses, trains, aerial stations)
Ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC)
Industrial control
Remote manipulation
Tactile internet
Mission critical apps
IoT
Narrowband and broadband
IoT 3GPP standards
LTE-NB IoT standards set in summer 2016
Cat M1 trials starting in November
Cat NB1 progressing
Vehicular
Navigation, diagnostics, safety, roadside assist, stolen vehicle recovery, emergency call, in-car voice, in-car entertainment and internet access, usage based insurance, etc.
Smart Cities
Energy, transport, buildings, healthcare, security, infrastructure, governance, etc.
Chitrapu identified four categories for 5G network technology enablers and the technologies within each:
Group 1:
LTE-Advanced Evolution
Narrowband
New Radio
NexGen Core
MultiRAT integration and management
Softwarization
Group 2:
NFVV
SDN
Network slicing
Management and orchestration
Open source
Group 3:
mm wave
New waveforms
Massive MIMO and beamforming
Advanced inter-node coordination
Hetnet and densification
Device-to-device communication
Group 4:
Mobile edge computing
Virtual and augmented reality
Tactile internet
AI
Cloud
Big data analytics
AT&T is currently demoing 5G trials in Austin, Texas, Atlanta and San Ramon, California. These first use cases use fixed broadband in the 15 to 18 GHz spectrum, delivering multi-gigabit-per-second speeds.
According to Chitrapu, the network operator will be the conductor for the future state for 5G. Here are reasons why:
Operators know how to do this for global
Roaming
Service interoperability
Operations
Business drivers
Enterprises want services – operators need to find model
Innovation and speed are advantage in enterprise where you have room to fail forward.
Propose business operations innovation
Federating infrastructure now under 4G in preparation for 5G