Towards converged 5G mobile networks-challenges and current trends

With the rapid development of wireless technologies, the concept of the Fifth Generation (5G) wireless communication system started to emerge and it is foreseen that it will be a result of standards convergence. The expectations towards 5G are set much higher in terms of capacity and maximum throughput when compared with Fourth Generation (4G). There are also some new technical challenges the system will need to face, like Machine to Machine (M2M) communication, energy efficiency, complete ubiquity and autonomous management. This paper analyses new technologies that could enable 5G networking, discusses potential standardisation and development directions, and presents recent research efforts in the area of future mobile networks.