IEEE Communications Magazine

Fifth generation cellular systems will be deployed in the microwave and millimeterwave (mmWave) frequency bands (i.e., between 0.5100 GHz). Propagation characteristics at these bands have a fundamental impact on each aspect of the cellular architecture, ranging from equipment design to real-time performance in the field. While we have a reasonable understanding of the propagation characteristics a... View full abstract»

Massive MIMO is considered as a promising technology to meet the explosive growth of data demand in fifth generation systems. To develop massive MIMO systems and industry standards, it is important to conduct thorough investigation of the underlying channel characteristics. This article provides an overview of the concept and ongoing research in the field of massive MIMO propagation channels, incl... View full abstract»

The exponential increase in wireless data transmission from smartphones has led to the saturation of the sub-6-GHz bands where cellular networks have operated to date forcing providers to migrate to the millimeter-wave (mmWave) regime for 5G. Although available channel bandwidths will grow from tens of megahertz to several gigahertz, propagation loss will be substantially higher. To compensate the... View full abstract»

High carrier frequencies are an integral part of the upcoming 5G mobile networks due to the available larger transmission bandwidths that offer high data rates and increase the quality of experience. To compensate for the high path loss at these frequencies, beamforming is applied, resulting in users connecting and switching between beams of the same or different cells. The current 3D channel mode... View full abstract»

The recently proposed channel model by the Third Generation Partnership Project for fifth generation New Radio (5G-NR) systems at millimeter- wave carrier frequencies in TR38.901 provides a good starting point for understanding the impact of propagation, material penetration, and blockage in cellular access systems. With this backdrop, the focus of this article is on hand and body blockage which h... View full abstract»

High-gain narrow-beam antennas or beamformed antenna arrays will likely be used in millimeter- wave (mmWave) bands and 5G to mitigate the high path loss. Since many multipath components may be excluded by the narrow beam, the mmWave radio channel (consisting of the transmit antenna, the propagation channels, and the receive antenna) strongly depends on the beamwidth, orientation, and shape of the ... View full abstract»

The millimeter-wave (mmWave) bands and other high frequencies above 6 GHz have emerged as a central component of fifth generation cellular standards to deliver high data rates and ultra-low latency. A key challenge in these bands is blockage from obstacles, including the human body. In addition to the reduced coverage, blockage can result in highly intermittent links where the signal quality varie... View full abstract»

Both massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology and use of frequencies in the range 24100 GHz are considered essential for upcoming 5G systems. Measurements of the new type of channels are needed, but this is challenging due to the large number of channels in massive MIMO and the short wavelength in the 24100 GHz channels (so-called mmWave channels). This article describes a sounder ... View full abstract»

Network testing plays an important role in the iterative process of developing new communication protocols and algorithms. However, test environments have to keep up with the evolution of technology and require continuous update and redesign. In this article, we propose COINS, a framework that can be used by wireless technology developers to enable CI practices in their testbed infrastructure. As ... View full abstract»

Vehicular edge computing is essential to support future emerging multimedia-rich and delay-sensitive applications in vehicular networks. However, the massive deployment of edge computing infrastructures induces new problems including energy consumption and carbon pollution. This motivates us to develop BEGIN (Big data enabled EnerGy-efficient vehIcular edge computiNg), a programmable, scalable, an... View full abstract»

UAVs are powerful IoT components, offering sensing, communications and data analysis in the air. Recently, 3GPP TS 22.261, TR 22.862, and TR 36.777 have specified performance requirements for communications between multiple UAVs in the 5G domain. This article discusses communications reliability challenges in a UAV swarm context. Recommendations for designing an ultra-reliable communications syste... View full abstract»

In the last decade, a number of frameworks started to appear that implement, directly in userspace with kernel-bypass mode, high-speed software data plane functionalities on commodity hardware. Vector Packet Processor (VPP) is one of such frameworks, representing an interesting point in the design space in that it offers, in userspace networking, the flexibility of a modular router (Click and vari... View full abstract»

The volume of data traffic has increased exponentially due to the explosive growth of IoT devices and the arrival of many new IoT applications. Due to the large volume of data generated from IoT devices, limited bandwidth, high latency, and realtime analysis requirements, the conventional centralized network architecture cannot meet users requirements. Intensive real-time data analysis is one of t... View full abstract»

ETSI DCC: Decentralized Congestion Control in C-ITS is a mandatory component of the 5.9 GHz ITS-G5 vehicular communication protocol stack that reduces radio channel overload, range degradation, and self interference. In this tutorial article we explain its principle, describe related ongoing standardization activities, evaluate its performance for emerging cooperative driving applications, and ide... View full abstract»

Fifth-generation cellular mobile networks are expected to support mission critical URLLC services in addition to enhanced mobile broadband applications. This article first introduces three emerging mission critical applications of URLLC and identifies their requirements on end-to-end latency and reliability. We then investigate the various sources of end-to-end delay of current wireless networks b... View full abstract»