ERCIM News 117
April 2019
Special theme 5G
Guest editors Thomas Zemen (AIT Austrian Institute of Technology) and Toon Norp (TNO)
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by Thomas Zemen (AIT Austrian Institute of Technology) and Toon Norp (TNO)
5G standardisation and first system trials have generated significant interest in the new system capabilities and use cases of 5G. 5G aims to increase the peak data rate to 10Gbit/s, and focuses strongly on business applications where a latency (transmission delay from transmitter (TX) to receiver (RX)) of 1 ms and a battery lifetime of up to 10 years are key performance parameters. Clearly, a 5G system will not provide all the performance targets simultaneously for a single communication link. In fact, 5G provides a combination of three different use case categories, within one system. These three use cases are: (a) enhanced mobile broad band (eMBB) for data rates up to 10 Gbit/s, (b) massive machine type communication (mMTC) with low energy consumption for a battery life of 10 years, optimised for low data rates of 10 bit/s; and (c) ultra-reliable low latency communication (URLLC) providing 1ms latency at low frame error rates of 10-5.
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by Gregor Dürrenberger (ETH Zürich) and Harry Rudin
Switzerland projects a rural, pastoral image with beautiful countryside and mountains, but it is also a highly industrialised country that is recognised for its precision manufacturing and innovative services. It is the industrialised side of Switzerland that is vitally interested in 5G, the most advanced generation of mobile communication. Currently the country faces social, political and legal challenges that make the 5G roll-out both difficult and costly.
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by Marius Corici, Marc Emmelmann, Manfred Hauswirth, Thomas Magedanz (Fraunhofer FOKUS, TU Berlin)
Local 5G networks are a major area of 5G innovation and offer vital insights into practical 5G deployment. Local 5G networks can give us important information because in these environments 5G technologies must be tightly integrated with different access network technologies and with the end-to-end software stacks of different vertical application domains, such as manufacturing and energy. To achieve this in an efficient and economical way, the Open5GCore.net software toolkit of Fraunhofer FOKUS provides the first 3GPP Release 15 5G core network implementation facilitating the rapid deployment of local 5G use-case-oriented testbeds. We have also developed the FOKUS “5G Playground”, a reference live deployment, with multiple customised network slices based on the Open5GCore and use case applications. The “5G Playground” has served as a blueprint for many other 5G testbeds deployed across Europe and around the world in the context of 5GPPP.
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by Christos Tranoris and Spyros Denazis (University of Patras)
5G-VINNI, a European H2020 funded project, focuses on the third phase of the 5G PPP by deploying an end-to-end facility which demonstrates that the key 5G network KPIs can be met. The 5G-VINNI facility in Patras/Greece is an exemplary open source 5G facility, which can be accessed and used by various vertical industries.
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by Olli Apilo, Mikko Uitto and Jukka Mäkelä. (VTT)
Controlled test environments enable testing and development of next generation use cases. VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd is testing 5G use cases covering several vertical industry domains for improved living quality, including solutions for sports wearables and media broadcasting.
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by Jussi Varis (VTT)
LuxTurrim5G is developing and demonstrating a fast 5G network based on smart light poles with integrated antennas, base stations, sensors, screens, and other devices. This joint project with research institutes and companies opens new digital services and business opportunities for a real smart city.
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by Hans van den Berg (UT, TNO and CWI), Rob van der Mei (CWI, VU) and Peter van de Ven (CWI)
5G mobile communication is commonly seen as a key enabler for smart cities. It will deliver huge improvements in speed, throughput, device deployment, traffic capacity and latency needed by the smart city ecosystem. A major challenge, however, is how to roll-out the highly-dense 5G network infrastructure in urban environments, with highly complex planning constraints, in a cost efficient way.
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by Sébastien Faye, Gérald Arnould, Francesco Ferrero, Imen Mahjri and Djamel Khadraoui (LIST)
In recent years, mobility challenges have led to a massive expansion of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), which are benefiting from the rapid technological advances in communication networks. In addition, the increasing complexity of new emerging applications, particularly associated with Cooperative, Connected and Automated Mobility (CCAM), is promising. New scientific approaches are continuously being incorporated into these applications, and it is vital that they are evaluated under realistic conditions, especially in the context of 5G communication networks. Luxembourg has recently experienced considerable changes in its traffic conditions, as shown by concrete examples of the use of simulation scenarios to advance the knowledge of complex CCAM and 5G applications in a simple, cost-effective way.
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by Tiia Ojanperä (VTT)
The 5G mobile network and fast data transmission solutions can be used to collect a huge amount of data from vehicles on the road. The information can be used for various purposes, such as providing road weather services, carrying out road maintenance and controlling self-driving cars. Ultimately the aim is to reduce accidents.
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by David Löschenbrand and Thomas Zemen (AIT)
Massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) is widely considered as a key enabling technology for 5G. It promises increased spectral efficiency and the mitigation of small-scale fading in rapidly time-varying communication channels through channel hardening due to the large amount of base station antennas. Spectral efficiency is of utmost importance for data-heavy applications. Channel hardening, however, is a key feature for ultra-reliable low latency communication (URLLC) because large fading dips causing loss of possibly safety-critical messages can be avoided. In the project MARCONI we investigate a measurement framework for rapidly time-varying distributed massive MIMO communication channels typically found in vehicular scenarios. With this empirical data we will work on massive MIMO channel models and new transceiver algorithms enabling a constant transmission quality from the base station to the mobile station. We will explore algorithms to enable these properties for the first time for highly time-variant and non-stationary V2I scenarios in both time-division duplex (TDD) and frequency division duplex (FDD) systems. We analyse the measured channel characteristics over time for collocated and distributed receive antenna setups to evaluate the fundamental limits of communication systems in such scenarios. Our results show that antenna placement plays a crucial role for establishing ultra-reliable communication links between cars and infrastructure.
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by Mohamed Elshatshat and Stefanos Papadakis (ICS-FORTH) and Vangelis Angelakis (Linköping University)
Heterogeneous 5G networks that consist of dense deployment of macro base stations, small base stations and device-to-device communications play a central role in improving the spectral efficiency and the delay performance of real-time applications. Enhanced inter-cell interference coordination based on time-domain coordination mitigates the downlink interference at the small base station users’ equipment but degrades the delay performance of the macro base station users’ equipment. In this work we exploit the inactive users’ equipment to serve as relays between the small base station and the macro base station users’ equipment which ensures that the delay requirements of real time users are achieved.
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by Haibin Zhang (TNO)
The Horizon 2020 EU-Taiwan collaboration Clear5G project focuses on 5G wireless solutions to empower the factories of the future. Some intermediate results of the project are also presented.
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by Manlio Bacco, Pietro Cassarà and Alberto Gotta (ISTI-CNR)
5G trials are beginning in several parts of the world. The smarter core capabilities, along with increased network capacity, very low delays and native support for machine-to-machine communications, open up several new application scenarios, while reinforcing existing ones. This work focuses on the joint use of aerospace platforms and 5G networks, surveying the huge advantages that their seamless integration can bring to the market, enabling ever more use cases and potentially providing coverage in low-population and low-income areas.
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by Lucca Hirschi (Inria & LORIA), Ralf Sasse (ETH Zurich) and Jannik Dreier (Université de Lorraine & LORIA)
Our recent academic research has identified several serious security and privacy issues in the 5G standard. These issues were discovered with the help of security protocol verification tools based on formal methods, which are now mature enough to meet industry-level standards. We thus advocate for their systematic use in critical standardisation processes, such as mobile communication and e-voting.
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by Dominique Hazaël-Massieux (W3C)
Just like its predecessors 3G and 4G, 5G’s success will depend on the degree to which it benefits the users of the applications and services it will transport. Making 5G and its concomitant network improvements work for the Open Web Platform will be key to the widespread adoption of this technology across as many industries as possible. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is planning to launch a multi-year initiative bringing telecommunications operators, OS and browser vendors and cloud providers together to take full advantage of 5G on the Web.
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by Evangelos Vlachos (University of Edinburgh) and Aris S. Lalos (ISI/ATHENA R.C.)
5G mobile networks are expected to support applications with very high-bandwidth and ultra-low latency requirements. Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are among the most attractive use cases. Of course, processing and communication of the huge amount of the four dimensional (4D) data introduce challenging requirements to the network design. To meet these requirements a novel framework that optimizes jointly multiple objectives is required. In this article we provide a paradigm where the reconstruction quality and the transmission efficiency of 4D data are jointly optimized.