A flexible 5G frame structure design for frequency-division duplex cases

A 5G frame structure designed for efficient support of users with highly diverse service requirements is proposed. It includes support for mobile broadband data, mission-critical communication, and massive machine communication. The solution encompasses flexible multiplexing of users on a shared channel with dynamic adjustment of the transmission time interval in coherence with the service requirements per link. This allows optimizing the fundamental tradeoffs between spectral efficiency, latency, and reliability for each link and service flow. The frame structure is based on in-resource physical layer control signaling that follows the corresponding data transmission for each individual user. Comparison against the corresponding LTE design choices shows attractive benefits.