Why do we need 5G? And what technologies are making 5G tick behind the scenes? Find out from Keping Long, Professor and Dean at the School of Computer and Communication Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, and a General Chair of 5GWN 2017, 1st EAI International Conference on 5G for Future Wireless Networks, which will take place in Beijing, China on April 21-23, 2017.
What is the central topic of 5GWN 2017 and why is it important? What is this event’s vision?
The central topic of 5GWN 2017 is discussing and exploring the development of the technologies (including PHY layer, MAC layer, Network layer) of 5G, with emphasis on both new analytical techniques and novel application scenarios.
Success or failure of technology is determined by user experience. If the user experience is not good enough, technology will be useless. As we all know, mobile communications have deeply changed our daily lives, and people’s desire for higher-performance mobile communications is never-ending. Looking ahead to the year 2020 and beyond, explosive growth in mobile data traffic will happen. For example, the growth of mobile data traffic of developed cities and hotspots in China, will exceed the projected average growth for all of China. The existing network of 4G technology is more to enhance the mobile broadband transmission peak rate and spectral efficiency, while the 5G will have a significant increase in the mobile broadband peak rate. More importantly, 5G can enhance the performance of the scenes of high-capacity connection and low latency, highly reliable application and can emerge to meet the trends on the path to exhaust the capabilities of existing wireless networks.
5GWN is aiming at showing the newest findings in 5G technologies and directing people’s attention towards 5G both in academia and industry. To further jointly promote the development of the communications and successfully promote the realizing of the 5G vision – “Information a finger away, everything in touch”.
What have been the recent developments advancing 5G? Various technologies for have been in development for quite a while- so how are they processing?
With the rapid development of mobile Internet services and IoT services, LTE has not met the requirements of these new applications and services from network operators. Centralized mobility management schemes have produced massive signaling interaction between the access network and core network. Besides, when there are tremendous end devices and ultra-dense network is deployed, there will be risks of signaling occlusion. Moreover, centralized route decreases transmission rate of local data, which leads to the terrible user experience.
Recently, many novel developments have been made to advance 5G, such as C-RAN, SDN, SDWN, network slicing, and so on. All these technologies advance the development of 5G greatly. From theoretical research to practical deployment, they have gathered a lot of effort and dedication from industry and academia.
What are the biggest challenges that this area is currently facing?
5G will be faced up with many challenges:
- Physical infrastructure: the appearance of new technology will lead to the absolution of outdated equipment and introduction of new devices. Next generation network is actually meant as a new architecture in hardware and software.
- Discussion and formulation of 5G standards: there are many organizations and institutes concentrating on the development and research of 5G. Therefore, there will be a variety of proposals and recommendations, but how to select a suitable standard will be a critical issue.
- Assignment of 5G spectrum: although there are 3 years before WRC-19 (World Radiocommunications Conference, 2019), FCC (Federal Communications Commission) has assigned 11 GHz high-frequency spectrum for 5G. RSPG (EU Radio Frequency Policy Group) also the spectrum strategy in Europe.
- Commercial development and network construction: Various software and hardware infrastructures would increase the cost and difficulty of network construction if there isn’t a suitable standard.
What are your expectations for 5GWN 2017?
The road to 5G should be a global effort. Through the conference of 5GWN, we hope the conference can gather a number of outstanding research contributions to 5G wireless networks, that address the major opportunities and challenges in applying 5G technologies to the understanding and design of modern network systems. And achieving the learning and communicating of the state-of-the-art and practical applications of 5G technologies. And jointly promoting the healthy development of 5G industry while making a positive influence of the development of global 5G standardization.
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5GWN 2017 is still accepting papers! Find out more.
