Page 9 - Mobile World Daily - Day One

SK TELECOM | 5G

Alex Jinsung Choi, Ph. D.,
CTO & Head of Corporate R&D Center
SK Telecom

Moving towards 5G:
Vision and Architecture

Over the past few years, one of the key buzzwords in the mobile network Figure 1: Key Values for 5G
industry has definitely been 5G. An increasing number of mobile network
operators, equipment manufacturers, research organizations and governments
are actively engaged in discussions on 5G and its key enabling technologies. In
2012, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) coined the term “IMT-
2020” to tentatively describe 5G and announced its plan towards 5G. To be more
specific, ITU plans to define 5G visions and requirements by 2015 and 2017,
respectively. Then, suggestions on key enabling technologies and architecture
which satisfy the defined IMT-2020 requirements will be gathered and
evaluated by the second half of 2017. Based on the suggestions and evaluation
results, the goal is to complete the 5G standardization by 2020. In accordance
with this timeline, many countries and regions around the world have
established organizations1 tasked with better defining 5G services and
infrastructure, while exchanging their intermediate views and technologies.

Although 5G requirements and Innovative Service is the top layer that Figure 2: SK Telecom's 5G Architecture
technical specifications are still being includes innovative 5G services. Built upon
discussed, there seems to be a differentiated 5G infrastructure capabilities, 5G technologies capable of enhancing cell in June 2014. A pre-5G trial service is
common view on some of the 5G services will be able to offer a highly reliable splitting, spectral efficiency, channel planned for 2018.
requirements: 5G should support 1,000 times and immersive user experience. In particular, frequency bandwidth and network operation
higher overall capacity than the current LTE ultra-high definition video streaming will efficiency. To achieve successful commercialization of
system and guarantee 1Gbps speed for every eventually become services that provide virtual 5G, it is necessary for governments, industry
user. There are also diverse efforts being user experiences such as multi-view video While both 3G and 4G radio access and academia to closely collaborate, while
made by the global mobile network operators streaming and even holograms. Furthermore, networks (RANs) were built as stand-alone diligently playing their respective roles.
to define 5G and its requirements. For the sufficient bandwidth and high reliability network, 5G RAN will be deployed by Governments need to develop new
instance, the following is SK Telecom’s view offered by 5G will facilitate the emergence of integrating the existing LTE-Advanced (LTE- regulations and measures to promote
on the 5G requirements. First, 5G should remote robot controlling services and mission- A), its evolution technologies, and new radio standardization on the competitive
provide both 1,000 times faster speeds than critical IoT services. access technologies (RATs). Due to their frequencies that can be used globally. The
LTE and ultra-low end-to-end latency of less heterogeneous nature, it is important to build industry should make proactive efforts to
than a few milliseconds. Second, 5G needs to Enabling Platform is the middle layer that an infrastructure where different radio access verify key 5G enabling technologies and push
accommodate 1,000 times more devices and creates meaningful and service-centric technologies are seamlessly integrated. 3GPP for the technical standardization, while the
things than LTE, and seamlessly connect values to support the upper “Innovative has been developing standards for LTE-A academia is expected to conduct ambitious
them anywhere, anytime. Third, considering Service” layer by properly transforming the evolution in Release 13 and plans to start studies in diverse fields with an open
the massive amount of information to be mechanical and disjointed underlying standardizing the new RAT in Release 14 perspective to discover yet more creative
collected from various devices and things, 5G networks to a service-oriented infrastructure. from 2016. Therefore it is important to technologies for 5G and beyond.
is expected to offer personalized services It utilizes two key enablers to perform this continuously develop both technologies to Furthermore, it is imperative for the global
based on dynamic and programmable task. The first key enabler is Network realize 5G RAN. One recent development has community to reach a consensus on the
network infrastructure and real-time data Functions Virtualization (NFV) and Software been the commercialization of one of the key vision, requirements and timeline for the 5G
analytics. Fourth, 5G should be highly Defined Networking (SDN), which makes the LTE-A evolution technologies called tri-band system so as to set a uniform direction for 5G.
available, reliable and have zero-perceived network much more dynamic, agile, on- carrier aggregation, and a PoC trial of 15GHz
service downtime. Lastly, 5G needs to be 100 demand, and flexible. The second key enabler and 28GHz cm/mm-Wave communication 1 Europe: 5GPPP, China: IMT-2020 PG, Japan: 2020
times more energy-efficient compared to is a well-defined set of Application systems providing peak data rates of 5Gbps and Beyond Adhoc, Korea: 5G Forum
LTE, allowing massive deployment of Programming Interfaces (APIs), which offer
infrastructure and devices in an efficient and the ability to automate and orchestrate the
scalable manner. Taking the full advantage of network both internally for automated
these rich 5G capabilities, our 5G vision is to network operations and optimizations, and
promise differentiated values in areas of user externally to the customers and third party
experience, connectivity, intelligence, applications along with telco assets including
reliability and efficiency. TPO (time, place, occasion).

The 5G requirements and visions should be Hyper-Connected Infrastructure is the
carefully reflected when designing the 5G bottom layer that can deliver massive
architecture. In our definition, the 5G amounts of data to the “Enabling Platform”
architecture is mainly composed of three layer in a very efficient and seamless manner.
horizontal layers, namely “Innovative Due to the massive amount of transmission
Service”, “Enabling Platform”, and “Hyper- data and stringent latency requirements, this
Connected Infrastructure” to properly layer will include not only the existing
address the above-mentioned five network technologies (both as-is and evolved
requirements. form), but also novel network technologies. It
is necessary to develop a range of

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