4G/5G spectrum sharing for enhanced mobile broad-band and IoT services

Abstract

5G has been developed for supporting diverse services, such as enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), massive machine type communication (mMTC) and ultra-reliable low latency communication (URLLC). The latter two constitute enablers of the Internet of Things (IoT). The new spectrum released for 5G deployments, primarily above 3 GHz, unfortunately has a relatively high path-loss, which limits the coverage, especially for the uplink (UL). The high propagation loss, the limited number of UL slots in a TDD frame and the limited user-power gravely limit the UL coverage, but this is where bandwidth is available. Moreover, the stringent requirements of eMBB and IoT applications lead to grave 5G challenges, such as site-planning, ensuring seamless coverage, adapting the TDD DL/UL slot ratio and the frame structure for maintaining a low bit error rate (BER) as well as low latency, etc. This paper addresses some of those challenges with the aid of a unified spectrum sharing mechanism, and by means of an UL/DL decoupling solution based on 4G/5G frequency sharing. The key concept is to accommodate the UL resources in an LTE FDD frequency band as a supplemental UL carrier in addition to the New Radio (NR) operation in the TDD band above 3 GHz. With the advent of this concept, the conflicting requirements of high transmission efficiency, large coverage area and low latency can be beneficially balanced. We demonstrate that the unified 5G spectrum exploitation mechanism is capable of seamlessly supporting compelling IoT and eMBB services.

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ORCID for Lajos Hanzo: orcid.org/0000-0002-2636-5214

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