Wake-up Radio based 5G Mobile Access: Methods, Benefits and Challenges

Future mobile networks will enable new use cases,requiring further enhanced data rates, latency, coverage, capacity and reliability. In this article, to emphasize sustainable energy consumption and improved device battery lifetime, the concept,benefits and challenges of utilizing wake-up radio based access in 5G networks are reviewed and discussed. To this end, the operating principle and associated wake-up signal structures are first reviewed, together with the corresponding power consumption and buffering delay trade-offs. Then, the applicability of wake-up methods at mmWave bands and beamforming systems is addressed and highlighted. Additionally, an energy-efficient mobility management procedure utilizing the wake-up scheme and uplink reference signals is described and demonstrated.Overall, the article provides an overview of wake-up based access in 5G systems as a promising power saving mechanism, and discusses the prospects, benefits and challenges. The provided example results indicate that wake-up enabled 5G mobile devices can virtually provide an always-available experience, rather than always-on.