Where, When, and How mmWave is Used in 5G and Beyon

TL;DR

This paper explores four deployment scenarios of mmWave technology in 5G and beyond, highlighting their architectures, use cases, and potential impact on diverse applications including fixed access, indoor, urban, and vehicular communications.

Contribution

It provides detailed examples of mmWave deployment scenarios with system architectures and use cases, illustrating their roles in 5G and future networks.

Findings

mmWave enables high-speed outdoor backhauling for fixed access.

Indoor mmWave systems combined with MEC achieve ultra-high speed, low latency.

mmWave mesh networks support cost-effective urban small-cell backhauling.

Abstract

Wireless engineers and business planners commonly raise the question on where, when, and how millimeter-wave (mmWave) will be used in 5G and beyond. Since the next generation network is not just a new radio access standard, but instead an integration of networks for vertical markets with diverse applications, answers to the question depend on scenarios and use cases to be deployed. This paper gives four 5G mmWave deployment examples and describes in chronological order the scenarios and use cases of their probable deployment, including expected system architectures and hardware prototypes. The paper starts with 28 GHz outdoor backhauling for fixed wireless access and moving hotspots, which will be demonstrated at the PyeongChang winter Olympic games in 2018. The second deployment example is a 60 GHz unlicensed indoor access system at the Tokyo-Narita airport, which is combined with Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) to enable ultra-high speed content download with low latency. The third example is mmWave mesh network to be used as a micro Radio Access Network ({\mu}-RAN), for cost-effective backhauling of small-cell Base Stations (BSs) in dense urban scenarios. The last example is mmWave based Vehicular-to-Vehicular (V2V) and Vehicular-to-Everything (V2X) communications system, which enables automated driving by exchanging High Definition (HD) dynamic map information between cars and Roadside Units (RSUs). For 5G and beyond, mmWave and MEC will play important roles for a diverse set of applications that require both ultra-high data rate and low latency communications.