Course 092 5G Network Overview

Dr. Spiros Louvros, PhD in Wireless Communications, Radio Access Network (RAN) Telecom Engineer, 3GPP technical recommendation group member, Greece.

5G has introduced a new way to offer services in the mobile industry. The advent of 5G and its applications will have a big impact on the world and on how we conduct business. It has created a new way to represent the 3GPP cellular technology in a quite similar and competitive to WiFi for short range cells (mmWave sectors).

Enhancing the prior LTE/LTE-A technology, starting from artificial intelligence and self-driving cars to telemedicine and mixed reality to as yet undreamt technologies, all prospectus services will transform our lives and move towards making lives easier, safer, and healthier. All these demands will ultimately require high-speed, always-on internet connections.

Moving from the 4G EPC core architecture towards more flexible network architectures and topologies, comprising technologies like software defined radios and network virtualization, 5G core defines a new era in the network deployment and services provisioning. In the same time 5G New Radio NR defines a new approach and perspective on handling the available spectrum, with more flexibility in frames and numerologies, comprising exotic technologies as massive MIMO with beam forming and machine learning algorithms for more efficient Radio resource Management and MAC scheduler.

This course will introduce audience into the smooth evolution from LTE/LTE-A to 5G in a stepwise path. The ultimate need to transform the society into a digital era will make clear to audience the necessity for 5G technologies and network slicing. The core network enhancements will be thoroughly described and explained together with the slicing-Virtualization and SDN functionality and architecture. Same presentation principles will be followed also for the 5G NR and RAN architectures, introducing the audience into the commodity descriptions of the spectrum enhancements and channels towards the more exotic technologies of CoMP, massive MIMO with beamforming, mmWave picocell communications, NSA vs SA architectures and carrier aggregation enhancements. After this course participants will have a solid understanding of the 5G network necessity, new services and network topology and architectures with all functional modules in both RAN and core domain.

In order for the attendant to better understand the content of this topic and to gain a further insight into the 5G network description, prior knowledge of LTE RAN and EPS/EPC is strongly required.