Guest Editorial 5G Wireless Communications With High Mobility

The fifth generation (5G) wireless communication networks are expected to support communications with high mobility, e.g., with a speed up to 500 km/h. Hence 5G communications will have numerous applications in high mobility scenarios, such as high speed railways (HSRs), vehicular ad hoc networks, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) communications [1]-[3]. The 5G systems will provide advanced communication platforms enabling reliable transmission for the Wireless Train Backbone (WLTB) or Wireless Train Control & Management System (WTCMS) [4], [5]. They will also enable new services or enhancements for vehicular communications in Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) [6]-[9]. The coordination and swarming control for UAVs will also benefit from 5G capabilities, as UAV-based 5G infrastructure modeling and improvement have begun receiving attention [10]. In general, high mobility communication is not only about how large is the maximum speed, it is more about the challenges caused by mobility. In high mobility scenarios, a wireless channel is rapidly time varying, Doppler shifts and spreads can be much larger than those in cellular communications, and if modeled statistically, the channel will be non-wide-sense stationary (non-WSS) over a short time period. In addition, network topology can change quickly, and switching among base stations (BSs) and/or peer nodes can be more frequent, not forgetting 5G challenges in cross-border mobility [11].