5G Talk

Years after 4G went commercial, discussion of 5G was rapidly heating up around 2016. The industry had by then reached a fairly broad consensus: future 5G should support massive data connections, flexibly adapt to multiple air-interface technologies, and deliver speeds of up to 20 Gbps. The scenarios and requirements of 5G were essentially clear, but candidate key technologies were still evolving, and the whole industry stood at a critical stage of standardization. This book was written at precisely such a moment and is one of the earlier popular-science titles in China to systematically survey 5G. The book begins with the evolution of mobile communication systems and the challenges facing 4G, explaining the pressures felt by operators, users, and technology respectively, then introduces the requirements for the next generation of mobile communication. It goes on to explain what 5G is, the service and technical requirements of 5G, and such real-world challenges as immature technology, spectrum shortages, barriers to technology integration, energy consumption, and terminal adaptation, while outlining 5G's main application scenarios. On this foundation the book develops two lines, industry and technology: on one hand it surveys R&D moves by governments and organizations in the EU, China, Japan, South Korea, and the United States, the pace of standards bodies such as ITU, 3GPP, and NGMN, and the positioning of equipment vendors including Huawei, Samsung, Nokia, Ericsson, and ZTE; on the other it delves into both the air interface and the network, covering new multiple access (NOMA, MUSA, SCMA, PDMA), new waveforms (FBMC, F-OFDM, UF-OFDM), new modulation and coding and Polar codes, Massive MIMO, millimeter wave and visible light communication, spectrum sharing, as well as network key technologies such as C-RAN, SDN/NFV, ultra-dense networks, CDN, and D2D. The final chapter also discusses easily overlooked corners such as 5G voice, signaling storms, security, and terminal development.