Outlook 16 : 5G Vision, Enablers and Challenges for the Wireless Future

1. Introduction: What is 5G?

“From the smallest personal items to the largest continents, everything, everywhere will be digitally connected, and responsive to our wants and likes” [1], comprises today’s vision for the communication network of the future. This vision is strongly supported by recent market studies conducted by global organisations, telecom companies, and operators, which indicate that mobile data traffic is (at least) doubled every year and will exceed traffic from wired devices by 2018.

Wireless communications are expected to dominate everything, everywhere, mainly empowered by revolutionary 5G radio network technologies. Accelerated by the dramatic impact of applications of the kinds of social networking (currently accounting for 10% of total data traffic [2]), and machine-to-machine (M2M) communications (600-800 million active cellular M2M devices by 2019 [2]), the centre of gravity for 5G will be shifted further to application-driven connectivity, transparently deployed over various technologies, infrastructures, users and devices, towards realizing the concept of Internet of Everything.

In the following sections of the White Paper, an overview is provided of the expectations and requirements, as envisioned by current understanding of what 5G should deliver, promising technology enablers are presented, novel system concepts are described along with the associated paradigm shifts and the new ecosystem of 5G services is explained as an accelerator for technology innovation, economic growth and social proliferation.