2.4.1 NGMN use Case Groups

According to NGMN [5], the business context beyond 2020 will be notably different from today, since it will have to handle the new UCs and business models driven by the customers’ and operators’ needs. According to the NGMN vision, 5G will have to support, apart from the evolution of mobile broadband, new UCs ranging from delay‐sensitive video applications to ultra‐low latency, from high speed entertainment applications in a vehicle to mobility for connected objects, and from best effort applications to reliable and ultra‐reliable applications, for instance related to health and safety.

Thus, NGNM has performed a thorough analysis for capturing all the customers’ and operators’ needs. The analysis is based on 25 UCs for 5G grouped into eight UC families, as listed in Table 2‐1 and illustrated in Figure 2‐2. The UCs and UC families serve as an input for stipulating requirements and defining the building blocks of the 5G system design.

According to the NGMN 5G White Paper [5], the UC analysis is not exhaustive, though it provides a thorough and comprehensive analysis of the requirements of 5G. One can identify the key requirements and characteristics of each UC proposed by NGMN as listed in Table 2‐1.

2.4.2 Use Case Groups from 5G PPP Phase 1 Projects

Taking into consideration the rich literature of 5G UCs and scenarios including those of NGMN described before, 5G PPP Phase 1 projects have defined a set of UCs with the aim of evaluating the technological and architectural innovations developed in the projects. Without entering into the details of each project UC, we present here a grouping of these UCs and a mapping between these and the business cases identified in vertical industries.

Even if different 5G PPP projects have defined their own UCs, an in‐depth analysis of these reveals strong similarities. This is because all 5G PPP projects agree on the three 5G service types listed in Section 2.2, and start in their UC definitions from the results of the METIS project, NGMN, ITU and other fora.

The UCs of 5G PPP Phase 1 projects can, ultimately, be classified into six families, as described in the 5G PPP White Paper on UCs and performance models [8] and detailed in Table 2‐2.

This classification into UC families allows having a general idea on the individual UCs and their requirements, e.g., a UC belonging to the family “Future smart offices” is necessarily characterized by an indoor environment and very high user rates. However, this general classification does not reveal the detailed requirements of the UC, which may differ depending on the targeted application. Some UC families may feature enhanced diversity in terms of mixed requirements as well as mixed application environments, an example being the “Dense urban” UC family, where early 5G users could experience services demanding extreme data rates, such as virtual reality and ultra‐high definition video in both indoor and outdoor environments, both requiring very high data rates but having heterogeneous latency requirements.

2.4.3 Mapping of the 5G‐PPP Use Case Families to the Vertical Use Cases

While the 5G PPP projects have been intentionally mixing services with different requirements for the purpose of challenging the 5G RAN design, the 5G Infrastructure Association (5G IA), i.e. the private side of the 5G PPP including industry manufacturers, telecommunications operators, service providers and SMEs, has adopted a vertical industry driven approach in its business case definition, where each business case describes a specific vertical need and its requirements, as described in the 5G PPP White Paper on vertical requirements [8]. Table 2‐3 illustrates the ambition of 5G PPP for a 5G network federating the needs of vertical industries.

Having a closer look at the business cases of Table 2‐3, we can see that the 5G PPP UC families cover the requirements of most of them. Consequently, Table 2‐4 highlights the relationship between the 8 NGMN UC families, the 6 5G PPP UC families and the main 5G service types.

2.5.1 Dense Urban Information Society

Dense urban information society is a UC referring to the connectivity requirements of humans living in dense urban areas. This environment can host each of the 5G generic service types as defined in Section 2.2: high data rates of eMBB for both indoor and outdoor users, a massive number of mMTC transmissions (despite the limited area, the 3D distribution of mMTC devices pushes the overall number of communicating machines to the extreme), and the presence of URLLC, e.g., for vehicles. Such combination of services makes this environment critical when considering potential 5G solutions.

Evaluation results for dense urban information society presented in this book, e.g. in Section 15.2, focus on challenges of eMBB communication for human‐generated and human‐consumed traffic. eMBB users are located both indoors (following a 3D distribution) and outdoors. 5G should be able to provide public cloud services with expected user throughputs of up to 300 and 50 Mbps in DL and UL, respectively. In case of transmissions used by device‐centric services, as for instance the communication between user equipments (UEs) or sensors, the required user throughput is in the range of 10 Mbps. Altogether, the 5G network is required to maintain those data rates for 95% of locations and time, for the users that on average generate a traffic volume of 500 GBytes per month. These assumptions lead to the overall traffic volume density of 750 and 125 Gbps/km² in the busy hour for DL and UL, respectively. Finally, the network should achieve this performance while taking into account cost and energy consumption. These expenses should be at the similar level as today’s expenses for both infrastructure and broadband UE devices.

To efficiently cope with the uneven distribution of the traffic in dense urban environments, radio access sites are deployed in a heterogeneous network (HetNet) configuration. On one hand, an urban macro layer provides wide network coverage and caters for the edge users’ experience and for the users on the move. To enable high data rates and relatively wide coverage, macro stations operate at a carrier frequency of, e.g., 3.5 GHz and are deployed every, e.g., 200 m, with antennas above the rooftop level. On the other hand, a small cell base station (BS) layer boosts available capacity over specific areas. To avoid heavy interference, small cell BSs are deployed with the minimum distance of 20 m between each other. They operate at millimetre‐wave (mmWave) frequencies around 30 GHz and utilize a total system bandwidth of about 800 MHz. In contrary to macro BSs, antennas of small cells are located below the roof‐top level, e.g., on the lamp post. Both cell types are expected to exploit massive antenna arrays.

2.5.2 Smart City

The main idea behind the Smart City concept is to exploit wireless communication of mMTC and IoT devices, to improve the overall quality of urban life, as also discussed in the context of early 5G trials in Section 17.3.1. This improvement can manifest in various ways, e.g., through a more efficient usage of utilities, better health and social care, or even faster public transport. To achieve this effect, low‐cost and low energy consumption devices interact with each other or with city dwellers through applications running, e.g., directly in their own smartphones or in the cloud. As the legacy cellular systems were initially developed for broadband applications and the notion of Smart Cities only arose when the standard was already mature, 5G has the chance to provide a native support for this UC to fully address its expectations in a cost‐efficient manner.

Although there are numerous applications related to Smart City concepts, out of which some are already implemented while new ones are constantly developed, there are certain challenges related to wireless communication that are common to the majority of appliances, and which 5G should address. Coverage, often characterized by the maximum coupling loss of the radio link, is one of such challenges. It is commonly associated with rural deployments, but the extensive penetration losses related to the attenuation or radio signal while propagating through building walls for indoor devices may be a crucial factor (e.g., for the case of a gas meter located in a basement). Coverage is also directly linked with the availability of a given service in an urban area, which is expected to be at the level of at least 99.9%. Another crucial metric is the energy efficient operation of Smart City units, as these are often located in isolated locations where battery exchange or recharge is difficult. To keep the costs at a low level, at least 10 years of energy efficient radio operations on a single 5 Wh battery should be possible, assuming sporadic data exchange. Low cost is also the driver for reduced complexity, as the Smart City devices are expected to be deployed in large volumes, which is also challenging for the radio network. The latter may in extreme cases for instance need to handle up to 1 million devices per km². Especially initial access solutions, as detailed in Section 13.2, are critical to meet aforementioned requirements.

2.5.3 Connected Cars

The connected cars UC facilitates safe and time‐efficient journey by enabling URLLC services between the cars and their surrounding, as covered in detail in Chapter 14. The most critical KPIs that quantify the performance of such communication are ultra‐high reliability and very low latency for the low payload messages exchanged for safety and efficiency reasons. Additionally, when driving in a car, bus or train, passengers are expecting the availability of remote services, despite the high mobility conditions. Such eMBB service may be used to provide entertainment or connectivity for humans on the move.

The performance assessment of the connected cars UC that is given in this book in Section 15.2 is based on an evaluation of URLLC only. As the safety of the passengers is at stake, an unpreceded level of reliability of transmissions is expected, with a specific target of 99.999%. This reliability is expected for low payload messages (up to 1600 Byte packets) that are exchanged periodically every 100 ms between connected cars.

Different environments are foreseen for testing the performance of the connected cars UC, and each one brings slightly different challenges. In a highway scenario, cars are moving at the speed of 140 km/h, using 3 lines in each direction. Network coverage is provided by rural macro BSs distributed with a distance of 1732 m between each other, and operating at a carrier frequency around 800 MHz with antennas located on high masts. The challenging factor here is the high velocity and related physical phenomena that deteriorate the error rate of the radio transmission. In an urban scenario, cars are moving at the maximum velocity of 60 km/h. However, the density of vehicles in proximity is much higher than in a freeway case. Network coverage is provided by urban macro BSs deployed with an inter‐site‐distance of 500 m, and with 10 MHz reserved for URLLC services at a carrier frequency around 2 GHz. In both highway and urban scenarios, a carrier frequency of 5.9 GHz is used for the sidelink communication between the vehicles, related to the dedicated Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) bands that are defined in detail in Section 14.2.3.

2.5.4 Industry Automation

The industry automation UC is URLLC‐related and refers to the Factories of the Future, as defined in more detail in Table 2‐3. It involves direct device‐to‐device (D2D) communications between machines as well as access point to machine communications. The focus in this book is on URLLC services within the factory, whose requirements depend on the specific UC and range in terms of latency from 1 to 10 ms, in all cases requiring very high reliability. The traffic pattern also depends on the specific industrial UC, and is typically a mix of periodic and event‐triggered traffic. The performance of specific concepts for network slicing is best done against requirements and assumptions of this UC, and hence an industry automation UC is also used as a detailed example for network slicing in Section 8.2.5.

2.5.5 Broadcast/Multicast Communications

In addition to the legacy broadcast services deployed today, e.g. TV, the fully mobile and connected society will need an efficient distribution of information from one source to many destinations [11], see also the video broadcasting scenario in Section 15.2. These services may distribute contents as done today, i.e. typically only using DL, but also provide an UL feedback channel for interactive services or acknowledgement information. Both real‐time and non‐real‐time services are possible. Furthermore, such services are well suited to accommodate the needs of vertical industries. These services are characterized by having a wide distribution, in terms of either geographical distribution and/or a large address space, i.e., many end‐users.

2.6.1 Current Mobile Network Ecosystem

The value chain of mobile networks is currently specialized into segments that include content‐related services and applications, network infrastructure, integration services, access devices, and a multitude of sub‐segments and niche applications. Figure 2‐3 presents the current value chain of the mobile telecommunications industry. This value chain starts with the hardware providers that manufacture network equipment (i.e., BSs, network controllers, gateways, etc.) and user devices (i.e., mobile phones, smartphones, tablets, dongles). Software providers developing software enablers (middleware and applications), occupy the second position as they allow operating infrastructure and devices. Then come the facility and equipment managers (i.e., tower companies and urban furniture managers) that own assets which are useful for network coverage and capacity extensions. Note that MNOs are also subcontracting some of the network operation and management tasks to equipment vendors or specialized companies. MNOs are then in the middle of this value chain, intermediating between infrastructure players and content and service‐related players. Among this latter group, we can cite content providers, over‐the‐top (OTT) players, especially those that provide telecommunication services (e.g., voice and video conferencing) and service providers that offer wireless services to end clients. Their services include voice calls (e.g., local, regional, national, and international), voice services like voice mail, caller ID, call waiting, call forwarding, and data services like SMS messaging, text alerts, Web browsing, e‐mailing, streaming, etc., and mobile TV services. End users occupy the last position in this value chain. Note that this denomination covers a wide spectrum of customers as will be detailed in Section 2.6.3.

2.6.2 Identification of New Players and their Roles in 5G

In its 5G White Paper [5], NGMN describes new business models expected with 5G. New business roles described in this document make reference to asset providers, connectivity providers and partner service providers. In this section, we use the previous section on the identification of the current players and NGMN's input as a basis to identify new players and roles in the 5G field, as developed in [5]. Note that 5G IA produced a White Paper for Mobile World Congress 2017 [12] which also identified new business roles with 5G, and the related analysis converges to a large extent to that of [5].

2.6.3 Evolution of the MNO‐Centric Value Net

Having identified, in the previous section, the main actors and the interactions between these, the focus of this section is now on the MNOs, as they are expected to play a central role in 5G, as in previous generations. We construct the value net of these MNOs and its evolution with 5G, the aim being to identify their coopetition relations with the other actors.

The value net model has been elaborated by [13]. This model is a complementary approach to the value chain framework, but the analysis is more comprehensive, as the main players have to be integrated in four categories, namely customers, suppliers, competitors and complementors, following a vertical and horizontal dimension. Figure 2‐4 gives the current value net of MNOs.

We first begin by defining customers, as this will give us a clear view about the positioning of the MNO. Two kinds of customers are identified: End users, either in the mass market (i.e., individuals), or other business customers (i.e., private companies or public administrations) are contracting with the MNO as a service provider. MVNOs, however, are customers of the MNO, as they buy the right to use its network in order to serve their customers. When the MNO sells network access rights to MVNOs, it is behaving as a network operator. Based on this analysis, we can see that customer groups can be classified into two groups: customers of the MNO as a service provider, and customers of the MNO as a network operator. We will keep this classification for the rest of our analysis of the value net.

Next, we stay in the vertical dimension and identify suppliers. As a network operator, the MNO has as suppliers infrastructure vendors and network operation & management software makers, as identified in Figure 2‐4. On the other hand, as a service provider, the MNO has as suppliers device manufacturers, as service providers usually buy devices from manufacturers and sell them at lower prices to end users.

Let us now move to the horizontal dimension and identify competitors. As a service provider, each MNO has as obvious competitors all other service providers, them being MNOs or MVNOs. OTT players, like Skype and Viber, are also seen as competitors of the MNO as a service provider, as they propose substitution services (e.g., voice, video conferences, etc.). As a network operator, the considered MNO has as competitors the other MNOs, as they offer the same services for MVNOs.

The most difficult task is to identify complementors whose presence incites customers to buy more services from the MNO. Obviously, content providers (e.g., online game developers, Google maps, TV channels, etc.) act as complementors, as people are more willing to buy mobile data access in order to benefit from their favorite contents everywhere. Device manufacturers are also complementors, as end users consider smartphones and tablets as valuable devices by themselves, and a smartphone or a tablet will be more useful with a wireless Internet connection. The device application developing industry is also a complementor, as the multitude of smartphone applications incites users to buy a smartphone and to subscribe to a mobile data connection. Note that we do not make a distinction between complementors of the MNO as service provider or as network operator, as they are generally the same in the way that they stimulate the need for network access.

Figure 2‐5 shows the evolution of the value net of MNOs with 5G, based on the 5G player identification in the previous sections. We start with the evolution of the group of customers where PVNOs join MVNOs as customers of the MNO as a network operator, and where verticals, by directly buying connectivity to their customers, become customers of the MNO as a service provider. The same verticals become complementors as, by moving towards more connectivity, they provide needs for people (i.e., individuals and professionals) for 5G services.

As for the suppliers of the MNO, the increased heterogeneity and the virtualization of networks are expected to diversify their list. The lists of equipment vendors and of network operation and management software suppliers are joined by classical IT companies like IBM, HP, etc., which provide processing servers and virtual network software, for instance based on software‐defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV), as detailed in Section 10.2. Data center players may play a role in managing hostels of BBUs in this context, especially for cloud RAN architectures. Asset providers like facility managers, urban furniture managers and tower companies are expected to have a larger role in the deployment and the management of parts of the access network, reinforcing their position as suppliers of the MNO as a network operator. With the evolution of spectrum regulation and the allocation of new bands under innovative authorization schemes such as licensed shared access (LSA) and licensed‐assisted access (LAA), detailed in Section 3.2, spectrum brokers could play a role in the future and manage spectrum resources on behalf of mobile network operators in order to allow real‐time management of the spectrum. Finally, as a service provider, the MNO can make deals with CDN players for content hosting near end users at the network edge, making them suppliers with regards to its role as a service provider.

Finally, the advent of new LPWA networks and various access networks based on satellites and loons in addition to the increased integration of Wi‐Fi evolutions within the 5G network introduce a variety of new competitors to the MNO in the RAN. A possible scenario, as discussed previously, is the emergence of large Wi‐Fi players in the bundling of these various access networks. Regarding the service provider role of the MNO, PVNOs and MTC operators join MVNOs as competitors for offering services to end users.