5G Extreme Requirements: Operators’ Views on Fundamental Trade-Offs

The aim of this work is to highlight what implications and trade-offs related to the delivery of new 5G services are relevant for mobile network operators. Some of these new services, in fact, require extremely low latency and high reliability of the communication link, which have very little in common with the targets that the telecommunications industry has worked towards until today. Mobile cellular networks have in fact traditionally been designed and optimised for the delivery of good voice and data services for mobile broadband customers, so the new 5G requirements now call for a re-think on how the future network will have to be designed and optimised in order to enable the new services. The purpose of this document is to outline relevant trade-offs that need to be taken into account when delivering 5G services. In particular, the interplay among coverage, packet size, data rate, latency, and reliability, is analysed.