Virtualized 5G Air Interface Protocol Stack for Multi-Cell Coordination

TL;DR

This paper introduces a virtualized 5G air interface protocol stack that supports multi-technology and multi-cell coordination, enhancing flexibility, scalability, and backward compatibility for future wireless networks.

Contribution

It presents a novel virtualized protocol stack design that supports multiple radio technologies and multi-point transmissions without altering existing protocols.

Findings

Supports aggregation of multiple frequency bands and technologies

Ensures backward compatibility with legacy systems

Provides a flexible and scalable framework for future wireless networks

Abstract

This article proposes a novel virtualized air interface protocol stack for next-generation wireless networks, that natively supports multiple radio access technologies and multi-point transmissions. Leveraging upon the concepts of softwarization of the air interface and virtualization, this design provides flexibility and scalability towards future advances in the radio access, whilst at the same time being backwards compatible with legacy technologies. This proposal enables the aggregation of multiple frequency bands and multiple technologies, without the need of modifying the operating procedures or the protocol of each supported technology. In the end, some challenges that have still to be addressed in future works are provided.