An Information-Theoretic View of Mixed-Delay Traffic in 5G and 6G

TL;DR

This paper reviews information-theoretic coding schemes for 5G and 6G that enable coexistence of low-latency URLLC and high-throughput eMBB services, outperforming traditional scheduling in various network scenarios.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of coding strategies from an information-theoretic perspective for mixed-delay traffic in next-generation wireless networks.

Findings

Coding schemes outperform traditional scheduling approaches.

Characterization of achievable rate pairs for URLLC and eMBB.

Finite-blocklength error probability analysis.

Abstract

Fifth generation mobile communication systems (5G) have to accommodate both Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication (URLLC) and enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) services. While, eMBB applications support high data rates, URLLC services aim at guaranteeing low-latencies and high-reliabilities. eMBB and URLLC services are scheduled on the same frequency band, where the different latency requirements of the communications render the coexistence challenging. In this survey, we review, from an information theoretic perspective, coding schemes that simultaneously accommodate URLLC and eMBB transmissions and show that they outperform traditional scheduling approaches. Various communication scenarios are considered, including point-to-point channels, broadcast channels, interference networks, cellular models, and cloud radio access networks (C-RANs). The main focus is on the set of rate pairs that can simultaneously be achieved for URLLC and eMBB messages, which well captures the tension between the two types of communications. We also discuss finite-blocklength results where the measure of interest is the set of error probability pairs that can simultaneously be achieved on the two communication regimes.