A Device Centric Communication System for 5G Networks

Introduction

Mobile communication has become a basic amenity in our lives today. Fourth Generation (4G) and Long Term Evolution (LTE) technologies (Akyildiz et. al., 2010; 2014) have been successful in re-defining the term “connectivity”, thereby truly making the world a smaller place. Researchers were dedicated to creating the 4^th Generation (4G) cellular systems almost immediately after the Third Generation (3G) cellular communication paradigm had been crisply defined and detailed out by the International Telecommunications Union Radio Communication Sector (ITU-R) (Akyildiz et. al., 2014; Mumtaz et. al., 2014; Wunde et. al., 2013). The evolution in the communication system paradigm has been fueled by the high demand for mobile broadband services with fast data rates without compromising the Quality of Service (QoS). The 3GPP working group has been working on two parallel aspects of the communication system, namely (i)Long Term Evolution (LTE) and (ii)System Architecture Evolution (SAE). These architectures define the radio access network (RAN) and the network core of the system, and has been included in the 8^th release of the 3GPP standard (Akyildiz et. al., 2014). However, the pressing need for higher bandwidth, greater connectivity, higher data rate without compromising on the QoS experience of a network, led researchers and standardization bodies like IEEE to delve into defining the next generation of cellular architecture referred to as the 5G Networks. This network is expected to have been deployed and extensively used by the year 2020 (Andrews et. al., 2014; Bangerter et. al., 2014; Tehrani et. al., 2014). The 5G system has the vision of the “big four” technologies like: ultra-densification, millimeter wave communication, massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and Device-to-Device (D2D) communication (Wang et. al., 2014; Chih-Lin et. al., 2014;Chen & Zhao 2014;Shuminoski & Janevsk 2014).

Today, the user of a communication system demands a reliable and fast network infrastructure for real-time access and sharing of information. Additionally the information should be storable and usable in various formats (examples text, image, audio, and video). Before designing a communication system, it is necessary to first identify the requirements of the system. For 5G networks(Andrew & Wetherall 2011;Li et. al., 2014), there is a general agreement that, it must include higher spectral efficiency, higher energy efficiency, lower end-to-end latency, and more connection nodes than Fourth Generation and Beyond (4GB) technologies (Chih-Lin et. al., 2014). Some of the researchers have also demanded that 5G network should support a host of new applications with a wide variety of requirements, and has to support the heterogonous network domain, including higher user deliverable data rates, enhanced indoor coverage, with high traffic growth (Badoi et. al., 2011). Rappaport et. al., 2013, has shed light on the five disruptive technology directions for 5G technology and mentioned several technology aspects for 5G networks. In this paper, we address one of the suggested issues, namely, Device Centric Communication system in the 5G networks.