Analytical study of 5G NR eMBB co-existence

TL;DR

This paper develops analytical metrics to quantify interference caused by coexistence of different 5G NR numerologies, providing insights into guard band sizing and interference mitigation for efficient spectrum use.

Contribution

It introduces analytical tools to measure interference levels in 5G NR coexistence scenarios and offers guidelines for guard band dimensioning and interference reduction techniques.

Findings

High interference rejection requires side lobe reduction techniques.

Guard bands can limit distortion but need optimization.

Analytical metrics help in efficient spectrum management.

Abstract

3GPP release 15 focusing on 5G general outline has been published in December 2017. The major difference with respect to currently deployed LTE is the support of various physical layer numerologies. Making the physical layer scalable allows to properly address new services such as low latency or millimeter communications. However it poses the problem of numerology coexistence. Indeed the orthogonality of the OFDM waveform is broken by the use of different subcarrier spacings and therefore multiplexed communications may interfere with each others. A first and simple solution to limit the distortion is to consider guard bands. In this paper, the authors develop analytical metrics to quantify the level of distortion induced by 5G multi-service multiplexing. Besides, general comments and guard band dimensioning are carried out. It is shown that high interference rejection needs to be associated with side lobe reduction techniques to favor an efficient bandwidth use.