Ultra Dense Networks: The New Wireless Frontier for Enabling 5G Access

TL;DR

This paper discusses the potential of ultra dense networks (UDNs) for 5G, highlighting their benefits in capacity and coverage, while addressing deployment challenges and the importance of infrastructure density and coordination.

Contribution

It provides insights into infrastructure density requirements and the advantages of network coordination for effective UDN deployment in 5G networks.

Findings

UDNs can significantly enhance 5G capacity and coverage.

Optimal infrastructure density is crucial for supporting high traffic loads.

Network coordination improves interference management in UDNs.

Abstract

The extreme traffic load that future wireless networks are expected to accommodate requires a re-thinking of the system design. Initial estimations indicate that, different from the evolutionary path of previous cellular generations that was based on spectral efficiency improvements, the most substantial amount of future system performance gains will be obtained by means of network infrastructure densification. By increasing the density of operator-deployed infrastructure elements, along with incorporation of user-deployed access nodes and mobile user devices acting as "infrastructure prosumers", it is expected that having one or more access nodes exclusively dedicated to each user will become feasible, introducing the ultra dense network (UDN) paradigm. Although it is clear that UDNs are able to take advantage of the significant benefits provided by proximal transmissions and increased spatial reuse of system resources, at the same time, large node density and irregular deployment introduce new challenges, mainly due to the interference environment characteristics that are vastly different from previous cellular deployments. This article attempts to provide insights on fundamental issues related to UDN deployment, such as determining the infrastructure density required to support given traffic load requirements and the benefits of network-wise coordination, demonstrating the potential of UDNs for 5G wireless networks.