5G Prospects

5G can be viewed as a conglomerate of access and network solutions. Device physics, RAT and Backhaul pose major challenge, but core network need also to be radically redesigned.

Core Network need be piecewise functional for the aggregate of 5G requirements. NFV is mature enough to achieve this network slicing. On the device side, Mobile phone is the only device which may need connectivity to all the carrier frequencies, interspersed and most of the applications. To achieve this, handsets should evolve with an ability to switch between Carrier frequencies and Software Defined Radios can be effective in this aspect. OS switching may also emerge viz., Voice mode, App mode and Tethered mode for a paired IOT device etc.

For efficient 5G Deployment, there need to be a multiplexing of access and core functionalities to realize specific business cases .This cannot be static since there is no specific busy hour in Data usage.

Can the signaling be improved: Signaling could be a major factor in optimizing network resiliency and battery consumption for the device. Can 5G signaling morph into embedded event codes? Is asynchronous communication with large buffers help? Uplink transmission can implement this, but at the device including a large buffer in the Mobile is not practical.

Mobile edge computing resources can be in terms of network, service orchestration and bandwidth.

On the voice side it is the call continuity that needs to be robust on to circuit switch or to a HetNet fallback. Circuit switch will sunset during the lifetime of 5G and IMS will become the mainstream voice during 5G.

New type of Federates and Aggregators for IOT can play a major role in 5G evolution. IOT transcoding, aggregation and mediation will be an important aspect and a technology within these realms need to be developed.

A new compressed set of MIBs need to be developed for billing.

The main trade-off when evolving from custom design hardware into virtualized implementations is not the N+1 or 5x9s, it is the security. Resource pools are a number of software nodes and more the logins more the vulnerability. Cloud security will emerge as a major new technology.

The 5G throughput and latency requirements for the entire set of use cases can only be realized towards the end of the life cycle. The twin bell curve model of standards and technology at different peaks won’t apply any more. This is one technology where the Standards, Technology and Ecosystem live in tandem.

Power optimization can mainly be achieved by control plane optimization (signaling) and policy control on the mobile device. In case of power challenge what do we shut down first - social media?

- Narasimha Vadrevu 05/09/17

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