Mantra: Key building blocks of 5G include the NR air interface, new radio and core networks, virtualization and automation technologies, and a variety of devices.
Brief Explanation:
3GPP defined 5G in Release 15, which can meet ITU’s IMT-2020 (informally, 5G) performance requirements. The New Radio (NR) air interface features include flexible OFDM numerologies, flexible frame structure, spatial multiplexing schemes such as SU-MIMO and MU-MIMO, advanced beamforming, flexible carrier bandwidth parts, and advanced channel coding such as polar coding and Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) coding. New architectures for both the radio network and the core network are defined, which are service-based and virtualization-friendly. These networks make use of Network Functions (NFs) with open and well-defined interfaces. The 5G network can be implemented using virtualization and automation technologies such as Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), Software-Defined Networking (SDN), OpenStack, and orchestration. Different types of devices beyond smartphones such as AR/VR headsets and countless types of IoT devices are expected to emerge in 5G.