5G Radio Network Design for Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication

5G is currently being standardized and addresses, among other things, new URLLC services. These are characterized by the need to support reliable communication, where successful data transmission can be guaranteed within low latency bounds, like 1 ms, at a low failure rate. This article describes the functionality of both the NR and LTE radio interfaces to provide URLLC services. Achievable latency bounds are evaluated, and the expected spectral efficiency is demonstrated. It is shown that both NR and LTE can fulfill the ITU 5G requirements on URLLC; however, this comes at the cost of reduced spectral efficiency compared to mobile broadband services without latency or reliability constraints. Still, the impact on the overall network performance is expected to be moderate.