In band full duplex (IBFD) technology for next generation wireless networks: A survey in cellular networks

Next-Generation (NextG) wireless communication networks with their widespread applications require high data rates, seamless connectivity and high quality of service (QoS). To cope up with an unprecedented rise of data hungry applications, users demand more spectral resources imposing a limitation on available wireless spectrum. One of the potential solutions to address the spectrum scarce issue is to incorporate in band full duplex (IBFD) or full duplex (FD) paradigm in next generation networks including 5G new radio (NR). Recently, FD has gained the research interest in cellular networks for its potential to double the wireless link capacity and enhancing spectral efficiency (SE). In half duplex (HD) cellular networks, base stations (BSs) can either perform uplink (UL) or downlink (DL) transmission at a particular time instant leading to reduced throughput levels. Due to the advancement in the self interference reduction (SIR) techniques, full duplex base stations (FD-BSs) can be employed to allow simultaneous UL and DL transmissions at the same time-frequency resources as compared to its HD counterpart. It ideally achieves twice the throughput without any additional complexity at user-equipment(UE). This paper covers a detailed survey on FD cellular networks. A series of SIR approaches, UE-UE mitigation techniques are summarized. Various existing MAC protocols and antenna architectures for FD cellular networks are outlined. An overview of security aspects for FD in cellular networks is also presented. Lastly, various open issues and possible research directions are brought up for FD cellular networks.