Evolution of Air Interface towards 5G

Air Interface is one of the most important elements that differentiate between 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G. While 3G was CDMA based, 4G was OFDMA based; this course reveals the contents of air interface for 5G. While 4G brought in a deluge of infotainment services, 5G aims to provide extremely low delay services, great service in crowd, enhanced mobile broadband (virtual reality being made real), ultra reliable and secure connectivity, ubiquitous QoS, and highly energy efficient networks. The above mentioned requirements are expected to be met by several advancement in technologies such as (i) new waveforms (termed as 5G NR, the new radio), (ii) millimeter wave technology, (iii) massive multiple antenna technologies (iv) non orthogonal multiple access (v) heterogeneous networks such as small cells and device to device communications (vi) energy savings in radio access network and (vii) ubiquitous quality of service among others. In this course we aim to provide insight into the fundamentals of the above mentioned methods, which are essential components of 5G Air Interface. We will begin with an overview of 5G technology aspects. Then we will discuss 5G new radio waveform, its genesis and variants. Thereafter we will introduce non orthogonal multiple access scheme. Next we will discuss various aspects of mmwave communication technology. Massive MIMO will be presented next, wherein we will discuss the essential building blocks and design challenges. While all these will be discussed that propagation models which are essential for performance analysis will also be briefly presented. This will be followed by performance analysis of heterogeneous networks including small cells and device to device communication. Then we will present energy saving methods for radio access network through multi objective optimization. The final part of the course will touch upon performance characterization of QoS for delay sensitive traffic for radio access networks.The intended audience includes research scholars who are interested to pursue 5G and beyond technologies to bring improvement in performance, which can make these technologies even more commercially viable. It is also expected to provide practicing engineers an opportunityINTENDED AUDIENCE : Senior undergraduate students, graduate level students, MS and PhD students, in the broad domain of telecommunications engineering who are interested to work further or even gather the latest developments in the domain of wireless communication technology leading to 5G air interface.The course is also suitable for practicing engineers in the domain of wireless communications who want to be familiar with the new technology changes that are expected to be engines of 5G air interface / radio access technology so that they can equip themselves with the new knowledge in a composite manner.PREREQUISITES : Digital communications, Mobile Communications / Wireless CommunicationsINDUSTRY SUPPORT : All wireless telephony service providers and equipment manufactures