Activity Report from the IDSP-TC

Published in TC News on 1 April 2015

by Fa-Long Luo, Béatrice Pesquet-Popescu and Umit Batur

Ten Key Aspects of 5G Technology Development: IDSP-SC Perspective

With the explosive growth of 5G wireless technology development, signal processing techniques are playing more and more important roles in many aspects.  As an industry-oriented technical committee of the IEEE Signal Processing Society, Industry DSP Technology Standing Committee (IDSP-SC) is actively promoting 5G technology from a practice and industry perspective. The following ten important aspects describe our future emphasis on various activities such as publications, conferences, standardization, deployment and product development related to signal processing techniques for 5G.

1.       Modulation, Coding and Waveform Generation in 5G

New algorithms under development for 5G standards include: generalized frequency-division multiplexing (GFDM),  filter bank multi-carrier (FBMC) transmission, universal filtered multicarrier (UFMC) transmission, bi-orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (BFDM), sparse code multiple access (SCMA),  non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) and  multi-user shared access (MUSA).

2.       Spatial Signal Processing for 5G

The related topics mainly include channel estimation of massive multiple-input multiple-output (massive-MIMO), orbital angular momentum (OAM) based multiplexing, adaptive 3D beamforming and diversity, two-dimensional array design and processing, full-dimension MIMO (FD-MIMO) and 3D channel modeling.

3.       Signal Processing for New Spectrum Opportunities in  5G

The related topics cover all signal processing aspects of millimeter-wave (mm-Wave) transmission and reception,   simultaneous transmission and reception (full-duplex),  smart spectrum sharing and access,  LTE for unlicensed bands-licensed assisted-assess (LAA).

4.       Signal Processing for C-RAN

Channel estimation in the uplink, pre-coding in the downlink, signal compression (point-to-point, multi-terminal, multivariate, and structured coding) are major topics related to signal processing in cloud radio access networking (C-RAN).

5.       Signal Processing for D2D Communications  

In device-to-device (D2D) communications, major signal processing topics include interference detection and management, coordinated beamforming and alignment, optimal signaling design and power-allocation algorithms for multi-point transmission.

6.       Signal Processing for 5G SDN

Topics related to signal processing techniques for software defined networking (SDN) mainly include:  algorithms of load balancing and interference management, design of SDN architecture, computing platforms for SDN, optimal link utilization, design and performance evolution of SDN control plane.

7.       Signal Processing for 5G UDN

Major signal processing aspects in ultra-dense networks (UDN)  under development for 5G include algorithms for interference cancellation and alignment, the use of network coding, cell virtualization, advanced signal synchronizations, and coordinated scheduling in terms of time,  frequency, spatial and power.

8.       Signal Processing for 5G based IoT

The related topics cover all signal processing aspects of the use of 5G technology in internet of things (IoT) and machine-type communications (MTC) with mainly including the design and implementation of near-zero latency transmission, ultra-low power sensors  and ultra-reliable linking.

9.       Signal Processing Software for 5G

Software issues mainly include the quality of experience (QoE), quality of service (QoS) and awareness,   development tools for simulation and prototyping, programming platform and models, testing tools, reference source codes and libraries as well as signal processing intellectual property (IP).

10.   Signal Processing Hardware for 5G

Topics in bringing 5G technology to real-silicon mainly include advanced processor architecture (vector processing, adaptive computing and reconfigurable transforming), cross-layer integration, millimeter-wave analog-to-digital converting, advanced radio-frequency (RF) circuits and digital RF processing.

The members of IDSP-SC are leading a number of ongoing international projects and events on 5G, including three special issues, one workshop, and one working group of ITU’s 5G standardization program (IMT2020) as well as the editing of the first design handbook on signal processing for 5G.  To further promote 5G technology from an industry and practice perspective, IDSP-SC is seeking for more involvement and contributions.  Any SPS member who might be interested, please contact the current chairman of IDSP-SC via email: batur@ti.com

IDSP-SC currently includes 25 members representing a broad range of industry and academic institutions throughout the world. Members are elected for a 3-year term for a maximum of 2 terms. We would like to thank the members whose terms finished in 2014: Visar Berisha (MIT Lincoln Labs) and Daniel Iancu (Sandbridge Technologies) for their valuable contribution to the development of our TC activity. Great thanks also to Béatrice Pesquet-Popescu (Télécom ParisTech, France) for leading the IDSP-SC as its chair for the last two years. Béatrice is succeeded by Umit Batur (Texas Instruments, USA). IDSP-SC is always looking for new members who would like to contribute. If you would like to join the committee, please contact batur@ti.com