10.1 Summary

5G is not just another radio technology, (i.e. not just an evolution of long term evolution, LTE), providing more capacity and lower latency to the end consumer, rather it's design and architecture principles follow a revolutionary concept, as for the first time this new system allows building open networks with open interfaces where in principle any level of network control can be offered to the outside world. The network can even offer itself as a service to tenants. The system architecture is designed to use network function virtualization (NFV) and software defined networking (SDN) concepts natively and exploit these technologies. The 5G technical enablers allow cost‐efficient support of diverse use cases with very different demands for throughput, latency, reliability, security, as described in Chapter 8 for ultra‐reliable low latency communication (URLLC) and Chapter 9 for Internet of Things (IoT). This will provide new opportunities to mobile operators, industries and end consumers. It will help people in their daily life, at their work places and in emergency situations. It allows connecting factories, which helps increasing the level of automation in various industries, i.e. less interruption time when designing and manufacturing goods of any kind. Connecting machines, things, and people can make life easier but also safer. The steadily growing data demand (a big US operator expects data traffic grows 10 times by 2020) will be addressed by 5G as well. Especially in dense urban areas and hot spots big chunk of available bandwidth, massive multiple‐input‐multiple‐output (MIMO) and 3D beamforming will boost the capacity for consumers. Together with very short reaction times of the network this will increase user satisfaction and willingness to pay more for a 5G subscription as indicated by some recent opinion polls.

However, creating new revenue streams does not come along the lines of higher throughput for end consumers or few Dollars or Euros more per monthly bill. Competitive pressure in the end consumer market segment is too high and will not decrease over time. A new operator on the Indian market gives a good example how a new business idea can change a market, however not in terms of revenue per subscription. New revenue streams can only be generated, if operators invest consequently in cost‐effective, optimized connectivity solutions, which can be offered to verticals and service providers. These solutions must be fine‐tuned to fit the needs of the customer, they must be flexible, open and must allow a tenant to control its connectivity solution (e.g. a network slice) whenever there is a need. These business models are new to the telecom industry. Current mobile networks are huge and complex machines, designed mainly for voice and Internet access. Adopting existing networks to the needs of special verticals like IoT service providers, factory owners, small and medium enterprises is not an easy task. LTE/Evolved Packet System (EPS) was not designed from the beginning to cope with the requirements coming from connecting millions or billions of IoT devices. It took several 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) releases to introduce new concepts into the overall EPS system, together with enhancements on the radio side such as Long Term Evolution category M1 (LTE‐M) and Narrow Band Internet of Things (NB‐IoT), which will continue to play an important role as low power wide area (LPWA) radio technology in future, to offer a solution that is competitive to Sigfox and LoRa or other low power and wide area wireless systems. With 5G, this should not happen as 5G provides support for all use cases inherently, enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), critical machine type communication (cMTC) and massive machine type communication (mMTC). Cloud‐based architecture and SDN support is part of the 5G system design natively. Flexibility comes with features like service based architecture (SBA), micro services, enablers for network function resiliency and mobile edge computing, the new Quality of Service (QoS) model and network slicing. The 5G Core is designed to work as a converged core applicable for multiple access systems: New Radio (NR), Evolved Universal Mobile Telecommunications System Terrestrial Radio (E‐UTRA), Wireless Fidelity (Wi‐Fi) and fixed. This allows usage of the same services via different accesses, seamless mobility without the need for re‐authentication, common protocols, thus helps lowering capital expenditure (CAPEX) and operating expenses (OPEX). Whether these capabilities offered by 5G are successfully used to open new businesses and connect all kind of machines in the interest of mankind is an open question. This requires clearly an open and critical mind from the (telecom) industry and the whole society, close partnership with other industries as now undertaken with 5G Automotive Association (5GAA) and 5G for Connected Industries and Automation (5GACIA), and the willingness to change internal and external processes to exploit the full capabilities of the 5G System. It is possible that verticals will build their own private networks, i.e. these new revenue streams mentioned above could bypass mobile operators, at least to a significant extent. What is the right choice for a given vertical depends on the specific needs and on the offer an operator or infrastructure vendor can make and is willing to make.

10.2 Outlook

Will 5G be the last “G” or is a 6th generation of mobile networks already on the way in the minds of people? This question sounds strange as there was always a next “G” after completion of one “G.” In addition, work on new wave forms and new techniques has already started for the next “G.” The Academy of Finland has selected the University of Oulu's proposal for 6G‐enabled Wireless Smart Society & Ecosystem as one of the first two flagships in the new national research funding program. Japanese DoCoMo announced recently successful tests achieving 100 Gbps wireless transmission using a new principle, Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM) multiplexing, with the aim of achieving terabit‐class wireless transmission in the 2030s. This may be the starting point of 6G, and we can also define a new Core for this 6G radio technology, if there is a Core needed at all or 6G will just follow the Wi‐Fi network architecture paradigm.

On the other hand, 5G promises to cover potentially all use cases, eMBB, cMTC, mMTC. Even if a new radio technology achieves higher data rates and smaller latency in future, is it then really 6G? Progress in technology will not stop, but 5G in its current form could be an umbrella (radio and core) system and architecture, flexible enough to integrate any new radio and core technology for the next decade and longer.

3GPP will progress on 5G in its Release 16, completion date is end of 2019 or beginning of 2020. The new features (list is not exhaustive) targeted for the New Radio in Release 16 can be grouped under the following themes:

• Efficiency:
  • Enhanced MIMO
  • Mobility enhancements
  • user equipment (UE) power consumption
  • Remote interference management
  • Positioning methods
  • Waveforms above 52.6 GHz
• Verticals:
  • Industry 4.0, Smart city, Private networks: Industrial IoT, NR in unlicensed bands with focus on bands below 7 GHz
  • Industry 4.0, Smart city: URLLC enhancements
  • NR Vehicle‐to‐X (V2X)
• Deployment and Operability:
  • NR‐NR Dual‐Connectivity
• NR for non‐terrestrial networks

The new features (not exhaustive list) targeted for the overall 5G System Architecture in Release 16 can be grouped under the following themes:

• Verticals:
  • Cellular IoT support in 5G
  • Enhancements for URLLC
  • Vertical and local area network (LAN) Services including Private Networks and Time Sensitive Networking (TSN)
  • Location Services
  • V2X Services
• General System Architecture enhancements:
  • Service Based 5G System Architecture enhancements
  • Network Slicing enhancements
  • Enhancements to session management function (SMF) and user plane function (UPF) topology
  • User data migration
• Enablers for Network Automation
• Support for additional access types
  • Wireless and Wireline Convergence
  • Access Traffic Steering, Switching and Splitting
  • Architecture aspects for using Satellite access in 5G

Following the international telecommunications union radio communication sector (ITU‐R) Workshop on international mobile telecommunication (IMT) 2020 terrestrial radio interfaces in October 2017, 3GPP is working on the initial description of its 5G solution (including results achieved in 2017 and 2018). This initial description has been provided to the international telecommunications union (ITU) in accordance with the IMT 2020 submission and evaluation process to make 3GPP's 5G a candidate for inclusion in IMT 2020. The summary is not final but gives a good overview of the content of 3GPP Release 15 (see http://www.3gpp.org/NEWS‐EVENTS/3GPP‐NEWS/1937‐5G_DESCRIPTION). The description will be enhanced in future based on 3GPP progress.

As for previous generations interoperability between different vendors based on standardized interfaces and features is also key for 5G. 3GPP plays a key role when defining the new radio and core network architecture. Due to the very diverse nature of use cases covered by 5G, other organizations play also a fundamental role for defining an overall 5G framework. This includes activities in European Telecommunications Standards Institute Multi‐Access Edge Computing (ETSI MEC) to define a platform providing standardized functions and data via well‐defined APIs to applications. This allows application developers making use of data and information on network and user level. In addition, standardized ways to manage and orchestrate network slices in an efficient way is extremely important to roll‐out services in a short time and without intensive manual input. For that purpose, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) created the Zero touch network and Service Management Industry Specification Group (ZSM ISG). As mentioned in Chapter 1 associations such as 5GAA and 5GACIA are considering the specific requirements of certain industries and provide input to 3GPP or other groups. This has never happened before in this extensive manner.

Big data analytics, predictive analytics, edge computing, a service oriented architecture for core network (CN) and radio access network (RAN), Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) will play a key role in the future. Exposing data from the network via northbound interfaces will be essential to monetize these data and allow automatic and fast network (re‐)configurations. Using AI and ML to make intelligent decisions, e.g. in Radio Resource Management of one or several adjacent cells influenced by a radio controller (a topic the Open RAN initiative is studying), optimizing network resources in radio, core and transport locally, regionally and globally based on predictive QoS schema, Self‐Optimized Networks (SON) and cognitive analytics are some of the exciting innovative new ideas that may come in future. One trend that is already visible today is using predictive data analytics and ML techniques with respect to IoT traffic. Automation is key to network efficiency. With the introduction of virtualization, the total cost of operation could increase initially and it can increase even more with manual support of network slicing. The real reduction in total cost of operation is expected mainly with introduction of “zero touch network and service automation,” enabling also support for fully automated slicing, especially for dynamic and large‐scale networks. For instance, when considering potentially billions of connected IoT devices, accurate predictive analysis of their behavior, optimizing operations and processes based on that is essential to support extreme network automation and reduce operational costs. This kind of predictive analysis can also be executed in Edge Clouds and requires potentially huge computing capabilities at the edge. Innovative ideas and foreseen trends will radically change the network as we know it today.

The New Radio and 5G System Architecture will give operators and verticals the right tools to harvest new business potentials and at the same time, 5G will blend into everyone's life. Every industry will be affected by 5G. 5G will transform our individual lives, economy and society.