METIS is the EU flagship 5G project with the objective of laying the foundation for 5G systems and building consensus prior to standardization. The METIS overall approach toward 5G builds on the evolution of existing technologies complemented by new radio concepts that are designed to meet the new and challenging requirements of use cases today's radio access networks cannot support. The integration of these new radio concepts, such as massive MIMO, ultra dense networks, moving networks, and device-to-device, ultra reliable, and massive machine communications, will allow 5G to support the expected increase in mobile data volume while broadening the range of application domains that mobile communications can support beyond 2020. In this article, we describe the scenarios identified for the purpose of driving the 5G research direction. Furthermore, we give initial directions for the technology components (e.g., link level components, multinode/multi-antenna, multi-RAT, and multi-layer networks and spectrum handling) that will allow the fulfillment of the requirements of the identified 5G scenarios.

METIS (Mobile and wireless communications Enablers for the Twenty-twenty Information Society) is the EU flagship 5G project having the objective to lay the foundation for 5G systems and to build consensus prior to standardization. The METIS overall approach towards 5G builds upon the evolution of existing technologies complemented by new radio concepts that are designed to meet the new and challenging requirements of use cases today's radio access networks cannot support. The integration of these new radio concepts such as Massive MIMO, Ultra Dense Networks, Moving Networks, Device-to-Device, Ultra Reliable, and Massive Machine Communications will allow 5G to support the expected increase in the mobile data volume while broadening the range of application domains that mobile communications can support beyond 2020. In this paper, we describe the scenarios identified for the purpose of driving the 5G research direction. Further, we give initial directions for the technology components (such as link level components, multi node/multi antenna, multi-RAT (Radio Access Technology) and multi-layer networks and spectrum handling) that will allow fulfilling the requirements of the identified 5G scenarios.

Operators need to continuously evolve their networks to meet future traffic and data rate demands. Today there is a wide selection of network evolution approaches to choose from. This paper uses a novel evaluation method to evaluate some of those approaches in a simple yet operator specific way. The method takes into account not only conventional dimensioning parameters like targeted user experience, average traffic demand, user density and cell sizes, but also three dimensional spatial user and traffic distribution, site specific propagation, and deployment strategies. It is shown that by applying this method to a low-rise urban scenario the potential capacity gains of higher order sectorization, additional spectrum, and site densification can be predicted. For densification with different node types, such as macro, micro and pico nodes, the respective site counts needed to reach a given performance target can be obtained and compared. Furthermore a comparison of the capacity increase per added low power node shows that there are diminishing returns in a high-rise scenario, but not in a low-rise scenario.

The concept of relay has been introduced in LTE-Advanced as a promising approach to enhance network performance. Because of the diversity introduced by deploying relays to a purely macro network, the conventional cell selection schemes do not perform well, leading to noticeable throughput degradation for some of the users. An algorithm attempting to address the issue is the use of data rate mapped from Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP) as the cell selection criterion. This algorithm, however, introduces an extra interference problem. We therefore describe an additional interference avoidance (IA) mechanism to enhance it. Performance evaluation and analysis are carried out to gain insights on the enhanced algorithm and two additional algorithms, both developed in this paper, to demonstrate their effectiveness in improving the throughput. Simulation results show that for relay-enabled networks the new algorithms based on data rates obtained directly from RSRP and the Reference Signal Received Quality (RSRQ) outperform the algorithm based on RSRP with offset. Moreover, the interference issue is well dealt with via the implementation of additional IA.

This deliverable introduces generic scenarios based on fundamental challenges, and the specific problem description of test cases that will be relevant for beyond future radio access. Specific characteristics of each scenario and each test case include the key assumptions regarding requirements and key performance indicators. In order not to constrain the potential solutions, the requirements are specified from an end-user perspective. The deliverable will not only serve as the guideline for the technical work and system concept design in METIS, but also can serve in external research communities to help to harmonize the work towards the future radio access system including the new generation system of 5G

The enhancement of cellular networks with relaying technologies is expected to bring significant technoeconomic benefits at the expense of more complex resource allocation. Suitable models for solving network dimensioning problems in cellular-relaying networks must handle radio resource allocation among hundreds of links and tackle interactions between networking layers. For this purpose, we propose a novel cross-layer resource allocation model based on average interference and ideal rate adaptation for the physical layer (PHY), time shares for the medium access layer, and fluid flows for the transport and network layers. We formulate a centralized social welfare maximization problem. When the routes are selected with an a priori algorithm, we show that the resource allocation problem admits an equivalent convex formulation. We show a numerical example for how to use the proposed framework for configuring the backhaul link in a practical relaying network. The overall problem of selecting routes and allocating time shares and link rates is nonconvex. We propose an iterative suboptimal algorithm to solve the problem based on a novel approximation of PHY. We state and prove several convergence properties of the algorithm and show that it typically outperforms routing based on signal-to-noise ratio only.

The use of low cost fixed wireless relays has been proposed as a way to deploy high data-rate networks at an affordable cost. During the last decade, significant academic and industrial research ha ...

The introduction of relaying techniques into cellular networks is expected to reduce the total infrastructure cost, especially when coverage extension is sought. With the advent of networks such as LTE, guaranteeing high data-rate coverage may become a challenge even for incumbent operators which nowadays provide full coverage for voice service. However it is not straightforward that operators will be able (or want) to guarantee coverage for the high data-rates. In this paper we study how the techno-economic viability of the relaying solution depends on the type of service to be provided by the operator. We exemplify the trade off between coverage and system throughput with two fairness criteria: perfect fairness (coverage guarantee) and proportional fairness. We show that relays provide advantages when the operator is interested in providing bit-rate/QoS guarantees. When maximizing the system throughput or cell capacity, relays are of less value.