Critical technologies towards 5G:Research Results Report

Research and development of the fifth generation (5G) mobile networks has started strongly and European Commission sees that "5G will be the very backbone of the new digital economy." This report presents many example research results obtained in VTT's innovation programme - Critical technologies towards 5G - consisting of tens projects. We start by presenting solutions for maximising user experience in wireless service. Then, we study enablers for improving system capacity including e.g. spectrum sharing for both terrestrial and satellite systems and millimetre wave radio technologies for 5G. Next topic is energy efficiency of cellular networks starting with consequences from thermal noise death of Moore's law, and continuing with many solutions for obtaining efficient heterogeneous cellular networks. Then reliability of critical infrastructures is concentrated on presenting first a tool for analysing interdependencies between electricity distribution and telecommunications networks in various fault scenarios. In addition, we discuss physical layer security. This is a new potential approach for defending against threats and attacks in wireless networks. Finally, many network technologies and environments used and developed at VTT are discussed. For instance, details are given about the 5G test network project