Humair Raza
- edited
We are in the midst of major 4G
rollouts and more than half of the world population have not even
tasted the supersonic LTE networks, yet we see a lot of industry talks
on the topic of 5G networks. So let us shine our crystal balls and see
what 5G networks are all about all the while addressing some of the
burning questions related to this topic.
In what ways will 5G be different than 4G?
In live deployments LTE have reached peak rate of more than 100Mbps, the lab setups claim to touch the true 4G bar of 1Gbps in low mobility scenarios. We have enough of the speed claims attached to 4G that one can argue that 5G is not all about raw speed, rather the focus will be on reducing the latency and increasing the availability to replicate or even exceed wireline experience.
On the radio side a non-cellular architecture based on soft cells or phantom cells is being proposed which would allow a complete separation between the control and user plane. Therefore UE will be served through a macro site for signaling and control whereas the data will be routed through the nearest small cell. To achieve peak rates of 10Gbps the use of mmWave spectrum is being considered as an alternative to the current sub 3GHz spectrum for 3G and 4G. Finally the use of full duplex radio technology doubles the capacity and allows a base station to simultaneously Tx/Rx with a UE.
There are a number of other feature and architecture enhancements that will make 5G much more machine friendly network. Whereas 4G brought a boon to the mobile video consumption, 5G is more about mission critical tactical communications. Rather the 5G nirvana is for the network to provide app specific dynamic resource allocation to allow a wide spectrum of use cases to coexist in peace.
Will 5G be more secure than 4G?
We only hope! There is no doubt that frequency and intensity of threats are increasing with the wider adoption of mobile broadband. LTE security architecture was designed with the inclusion of SecGW to protect unencrypted S1 and X2 interfaces. However a large number of operators are still on the borderline regarding the role of SecGW. One thing is for sure that for 5G threat vectors will grow exponentially with IoT use cases as a vast majority of consumer devices will not have the state of the art security design. In other words it is much easier to hijack a toaster than a smartphone.
Based on the expected number of devices on 5G, IPv6 will be the default addressing scheme. Even though an end-end routable IPv6 environment solves number of issues with the current NAT based schemes, but will require state-aware intelligence to distinguish legitimate sessions from the attacks originated from IPv6 cloud.
Will SDN and NFV play a critical role in 5G?
Use cases being talked about for 5G are very diverse, low BW, high-availability, low-latency M2M traffic on one end to very high BW video immersion traffic on the other end. Services offered to these new classes of “things” will be very diverse as well, demanding the programmability, personalization and agility of Hi-IQ networks. SDN and NFV will be key technologies to enable these objectives. NFV has already started inroads even in 4G networks through vEPC and Cloud RAN architectures, these architectures will be further enhanced and streamlined to handle 5G requirements.
What about backhaul for 5G?
4G/LTE attempted to create a flat-IP architecture. However, the backhaul still mostly remained hub-and-spoke as X2 interface was not widely implemented. With LTE-Advanced there is a revised interest in X2 interface or a meshed backhaul architecture to implement CoMP, eICIC and other RAN enhancements.
With evolution to 5G, RAN architecture is becoming very disruptive, non-cellular design with complete separation of control and user planes, full duplex radios with in-band backhaul, high density radio footprint to name a few. With the inclusion of SDN and NFV there will really be no distinction between backhaul and mobile core. Eventually there will be one Hi-IQ IP transport network connecting “things” to the apps in the cloud. As 5G will become “un-cellular” so will 5G-backhaul become “un-backhaul”.
(from: http://forums.juniper.net/t5/Industry-Solutions-and-Trends/5G-Networks-and-Backhaul/ba-p/243528)
In what ways will 5G be different than 4G?
In live deployments LTE have reached peak rate of more than 100Mbps, the lab setups claim to touch the true 4G bar of 1Gbps in low mobility scenarios. We have enough of the speed claims attached to 4G that one can argue that 5G is not all about raw speed, rather the focus will be on reducing the latency and increasing the availability to replicate or even exceed wireline experience.
On the radio side a non-cellular architecture based on soft cells or phantom cells is being proposed which would allow a complete separation between the control and user plane. Therefore UE will be served through a macro site for signaling and control whereas the data will be routed through the nearest small cell. To achieve peak rates of 10Gbps the use of mmWave spectrum is being considered as an alternative to the current sub 3GHz spectrum for 3G and 4G. Finally the use of full duplex radio technology doubles the capacity and allows a base station to simultaneously Tx/Rx with a UE.
There are a number of other feature and architecture enhancements that will make 5G much more machine friendly network. Whereas 4G brought a boon to the mobile video consumption, 5G is more about mission critical tactical communications. Rather the 5G nirvana is for the network to provide app specific dynamic resource allocation to allow a wide spectrum of use cases to coexist in peace.
Will 5G be more secure than 4G?
We only hope! There is no doubt that frequency and intensity of threats are increasing with the wider adoption of mobile broadband. LTE security architecture was designed with the inclusion of SecGW to protect unencrypted S1 and X2 interfaces. However a large number of operators are still on the borderline regarding the role of SecGW. One thing is for sure that for 5G threat vectors will grow exponentially with IoT use cases as a vast majority of consumer devices will not have the state of the art security design. In other words it is much easier to hijack a toaster than a smartphone.
Based on the expected number of devices on 5G, IPv6 will be the default addressing scheme. Even though an end-end routable IPv6 environment solves number of issues with the current NAT based schemes, but will require state-aware intelligence to distinguish legitimate sessions from the attacks originated from IPv6 cloud.
Will SDN and NFV play a critical role in 5G?
Use cases being talked about for 5G are very diverse, low BW, high-availability, low-latency M2M traffic on one end to very high BW video immersion traffic on the other end. Services offered to these new classes of “things” will be very diverse as well, demanding the programmability, personalization and agility of Hi-IQ networks. SDN and NFV will be key technologies to enable these objectives. NFV has already started inroads even in 4G networks through vEPC and Cloud RAN architectures, these architectures will be further enhanced and streamlined to handle 5G requirements.
What about backhaul for 5G?
4G/LTE attempted to create a flat-IP architecture. However, the backhaul still mostly remained hub-and-spoke as X2 interface was not widely implemented. With LTE-Advanced there is a revised interest in X2 interface or a meshed backhaul architecture to implement CoMP, eICIC and other RAN enhancements.
With evolution to 5G, RAN architecture is becoming very disruptive, non-cellular design with complete separation of control and user planes, full duplex radios with in-band backhaul, high density radio footprint to name a few. With the inclusion of SDN and NFV there will really be no distinction between backhaul and mobile core. Eventually there will be one Hi-IQ IP transport network connecting “things” to the apps in the cloud. As 5G will become “un-cellular” so will 5G-backhaul become “un-backhaul”.
(from: http://forums.juniper.net/t5/Industry-Solutions-and-Trends/5G-Networks-and-Backhaul/ba-p/243528)
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