Deliverable D3.1: Initial Concepts on 5G Architecture and Integration

The use cases envisioned for the future are dictating high and very diverse requirements for 5G mobile communication systems. State of the art systems, such as LTE, cannot meet future network requirements in terms of data rate, latency, reliability and ability to support many devices. Further, the envisioned ultra-dense deployments are highly challenging with respect to the Deployments brings challenges of complex network management and the provisioning of backhaul to a large number of network nodes. Last but not least: we cannot predict the future. Consequently, the 5G architecture should be flexible enough to support new usages of the networks in the future. We study these challenges and approach them mainly from the RAN architecture perspective. We provide initial concepts that will we further evaluate in the course of the project. We find that tight integration on the lowest possible level of the network architecture could solve most of identified problems. While the proposed initial solutions outline the direction for further development of the 5G architecture, many questions are still open and require further study