Dynamic mobile base stations in 5G networks :

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The 5G Italy Book 2019:

a Multiperspective View of 5G

Edited by:

Marco Ajmone Marsan Nicola Blefari Melazzi Stefano Buzzi

Sergio Palazzo

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ii

All works of authorship contained in this publications are either original to their respective contributors co-authors, or non copyrighted or otherwise the object of applicable fair use provisions. In case of questions about copyright or other intellectual property rights, please contact the publisher at:

Consorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario per le Telecomunicazioni Viale G.P. Usberti, 181/A Pal.3

43124 Parma (PR) – ITALY PEC: [email protected]

ISBN: 9788832170030

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Preface

5G is the new generation of the global telecommunication network. It is based on a cloud-native, softwarized, end-to-end architecture, encompassing the radio access, metro, and core network sections, as well as the edge, fog, and cloud computing resources within the network. 5G is becoming available in many countries, including Italy, and is emerging as the new reference architecture for the global mobile and fixed telecommunication network. 5G is not only an evolution of 4G in terms of performance, but it also creates a break- ing point with respect to previous generations: 5G will support a number of diversified vertical sectors, targeting different types of users and services, including both machine and human type communications. Three classes of innovative service scenarios have been already defined:

- Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB): that is, services characterized by very high data rates and very high density of users, for instance virtual reality and augmented reality, requiring extremely high-quality mobile video distribution, and, in general, support of the expected increases in video consumption.

- Ultra-reliable and low latency communications (URLLC): that is, services related to scenarios with extremely demanding requirements in terms of latency and reliability, such as automated driving, remote surgery, smart factories, smart grid, intelligent transportation systems.

- Massive machine type communications (mMTC): that is, the wide variety of services that will drive the advent of IoT, mainly characterized by huge number of devices, each typically transmitting small volumes of data, either sporadically or quasi-periodically, with variable requirements in terms of latency and reliability, but with stringent constraints in terms of cost and energy.

To efficiently support such diverse and demanding new applications and end to end services, 5G is not limited to the cellular section, as previous generations, but encompasses the whole network, and introduces several innovations, among which:

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- New Radio, a new air interface designed to greatly improve the performance of the access network;

- network softwarization, i.e., the virtualization of network services, obtained by means of three synergic solutions: i) a logically centralized control plane enabling a flexible and agile configuration of network resources (SDN); ii) the deployment of network functions as software components running on industry-standard commodity hardware platforms, instead of using spe- cialized hardware (NFV); iii) the outsourcing to computing elements (edge, fog and cloud) not only of processing and storage functions but also of network services, control and management (cloud networking);

- network slicing: i.e., the possibility to define end-to-end virtual networks at the service of a class of applications. Slices are obtained through a softwarized management of the network resources; slices can be flexibly and quickly defined and setup, to support diversified vertical services;

- full exploitation of in-network computing, following the recent trend that is transforming the Internet in a network of data centres (or, more generally, computing resources) in which the prevailing communication paradigm is becoming device-to-computing-to-device, rather than device-to-device, and in which the smartphone is becoming more and more an instrument to access artificial intelligence services;

- a Service-Based Architecture, for which network control functions ex- pose an Application Programming Interface (API) based on HTTP/2 and RESTful technologies, thus providing an unprecedented flexibility, simpli- fying the deployment and the evolution of the network and harmonizing the entire network control plane with Web technologies.

The interest of the media and the general public on 5G is enormous; some reporters write of the “5G fever”, even if networks are not yet fully operational and terminals are just about to reach the market. Expectations about the value of the markets generated by 5G are amazing; they are estimated in tens of billions of euros, just in the case of the automotive sector. 5G is expected to foster the emergence of a large ecosystem, including more stakeholders than in the past, with more complex relationships, more heterogeneity and more dynamicity. Applications sectors will be more and more actively involved in the creation and provision of services, taking full part in the 5G value chain. 5G will provide services not only to customers but also to industrial stakeholders, allowing both Business to Customers (B2C) and Business to Business (B2B) models. 5G is also an opportunity for network operators to return in the spotlight of the service creation and management arena.

5G is very important for Italy, and Italy is one of the most advanced European nations in the 5G technology. For these reasons, CNIT* decided to organize on December 3-5, 2019 the second edition of the 5G-Italy event (https://www.5gitaly.eu/), which provides a holistic view of 5G. 5G Italy is a three days conference, where politics, regulatory authorities, research, businesses, economy and public administrations meet, addressing the chal- lenges and opportunities of this technology. 5G Italy focuses on policy and

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Preface v

research issues, but also, and significantly, on vertical applications in the most relevant sectors: Energy, Industry 4.0, Media and Tourism, Security, Public Administration, eHealth, Transports, Mobility and Automotive, and Infrastructure Protection. The event also includes scientific sessions and an international PhD school, in parallel to the main conference. The previous edition of 5G Italy in 2018 has been an extremely successful event, with 107 speakers, including a large selection of key Italian players, among them Ministers and CEOs.

As a companion initiative, CNIT also edited this book, with the aim of overviewing the status of development of 5G and of documenting the Italian involvement in 5G research and experimentation. The book starts with Part 1, devoted to an overview of what is 5G today. Part 1 touches on very relevant topics, such as the state of standardization and of deployment in the world, the most relevant use cases (from automotive and smart factories to health and IoT, the concerns about electromagnetic emission, and privacy). Part 2 focuses on 5G in Italy, taking mostly an industrial viewpoint and reporting on the status of deployment and on Italian research contributions. Part 3 looks at 5G applications and services, considering the main service classes defined for 5G. Part 4 provides an up to date primer on 5G technologies, and contains mostly a revised and updated version of similar chapters contained in last year’s volume. Finally, Part 5 looks at what is coming beyond 5G: from aspects on which the 5G standardization still is far from stable to proposals that are beginning to appear for 6G.

Importantly, this book will have a first version, printed, and presented at the 5G Italy 2019 event, but then it will continue to live and grow on the web, updated with contributions coming from the conference, so becoming a reference book on 5G (and available here:https://www.5gitaly.eu/

5g-italy-book/).

We wish to thank all contributors, from many colleagues of Italian academia and industry, to some very relevant international actors of the 5G community. We are especially indebted to Raffaele Bolla, Carla-Fabiana Chiasserini, Paola Iovanna, Giovanni Schembra, and Luca Valcarenghi for their supportive work in the editorial coordination of the different Parts of the Book.

We prepared this book for you, the reader. We do hope you will enjoy reading it, and possibly decide to add yet another contribution on aspects that we may have overlooked.

Roma, The eBook Editors

November 2019 Marco Ajmone Marsan

Nicola Blefari Melazzi Stefano Buzzi Sergio Palazzo

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vi Preface

*CNIT (National, Inter-University Consortium for Telecommunications, https://www.cnit.it/) is a non-profit consortium established in 1995 and bringing together 37 public Italian universities to perform research, innovation and education/training activities in the field of Information and Com- munication Technology (ICT). CNIT also owns four National Laboratories:

Multimedia Communications, Photonic Networks & Technologies; Radar &

Surveillance Systems; Smart, Sustainable and Secure Internet Technologies and Infrastructures.

More than 1,300 professors and researchers, belonging to the member universities, collaborate within CNIT, together with more than 100 CNIT own employees. CNIT participated in hundreds of research projects, including EU coordinated projects, ERC grants and Italian nation-wide initiatives. In the EU H2020 program, CNIT has obtained 41 projects and coordinated 10 of them. CNIT has also a significant experience in the organization of scientific events. CNIT’s funding comes from private companies and competitive programs. The innovation and technology transfer of research results from universities towards end-users and industry is a primary mission for CNIT.

CNIT also facilitates the cooperation between member universities and pro- motes the collaboration of the same universities with other research institutes and with national and international industries.

CNIT is very active in 5G and related initiatives: i) CNIT participates in several EU projects on 5G and coordinates a number of them (four such projects ranked first in their respective calls); ii) CNIT is an elected member of the 5GPPP (https://5g-ppp.eu/), a 1.4 Billion Euro joint initiative including the European Commission and the European ICT industries and academia to rethink the network infrastructure and to create the next generation of communication networks and services; iii) CNIT participates in the 5G trials of the Italian Ministry of Economic Development in Milan; iv) CNIT participates in several EU projects on applications of 5G (e.g., for intelligent transport systems and autonomous vehicles) and in the Graphene and Quantum Information flagships projects.

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Acknowledgements

The Editors wish to thank all contributors, from many colleagues of Italian academia and industry, to some very relevant international actors of the 5G community. We are honoured to have so many high quality contributions in this collection, which will surely further stimulate interest in 5G, and simplify the work of many newcomers to such an exciting field.

We hope you will enjoy reading this eBook, and possibly decide to add yet another contribution on aspects that we may have overlooked.

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Edited by:

Raffaele Bolla

University of Genova and CNIT

Giovanni Schembra

University of Catania

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The 5G standardization process

Maria Pia Galante, Giovanni Romano

AbstractOpen standards are a key factor to determine the success of a technology, as demonstrated by LTE system specified by 3GPP. The industry looked to open standards also for 5G, following the successful process adopted with 4G: define requirements; produce technical specifications taking the best from multiple Standard Development Organizations; provide any profiling (i.e. selection of the minimum set of capabilities) needed to operate the technology in multi-operator multi-vendor environment. This paper describes the main players in 5G standardization, namely ITU-R and 3GPP, without forgetting that successful standards are the result of a complete ecosystem. In particular, it provides the current roadmap of 3GPP and the main features specified in each Release.

1 Introduction

If we look to recent development of the industry, one of the main successes of standardization was mobile communications as specified by Third Generation Part- nership Project (3GPP) [1], which provided the technical specifications for UMTS and LTE. Open standards, as specified by 3GPP, allowed people to experience new services with the freedom to move all around the world, thanks to the capability of their devices to interwork with networks operated by different service providers and with network equipment from different vendors.

As such, standardization is the definition of basic aspects of the mobile system, encompassing interfaces and protocols that allow the interworking between different components. We could imagine standards as similar to an assembly line in a factory, where different components are assembled in a pre-defined manner, independently Maria Pia Galante

TIM

Giovanni Romano TIM

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6 Maria Pia Galante, Giovanni Romano on who manufactured the specific component. Therefore, the open standards were exploited by different entities in the value chain, e.g. chipset makers, equipment manufacturers, network vendors, network carriers and service providers, all of them contributing to the delivery of the communication service to the mobile customer, whatever the phone he/she will use and whatever the network he/she will get service from.

A key factor enabled by standardization is economy of scale and mass market production to deliver equipment and devices at a cost affordable to everybody.

Nowadays the research costs to develop and commercialize a high technology device are incredibly high and the only way to recover the costs is to provide global solutions able to work all over the world. Having different solutions for Europe, China, America or Japan would lead to a tenfold increase in development costs. Lack of standards and interoperability at the end increases the costs for all actors in the value chain:

end customers, service providers, network operators and terminal and equipment vendors.

With 5G the problem becomes even more complex, because the number of players increases and expands outside the “usual” ICT players. According to the European Union vision, 5G is the enabler for a fully connected society by integrating many industrial vertical segments (i.e. the verticals) that will deliver applications to enable e.g. smart cities, smart grids, public safety applications, etc. on top of a common communication infrastructure.

This document describes how and where the standardization of 5G is carried out, by the highlighting the work “behind the scenes” from shaping the vision to specifications drafting. An overview of the main players is given, followed by an in-depth of the two major players: ITU-R [2] and 3GPP, who are shaping the technical characteristics of the new system. Other authors provided an overview of the standardization process, but the idea behind this Chapter is to provide a view of the process leading to success of a technology, by means of high quality standards.

2 The main standardization bodies

The standardization process of a mobile communication system is not simply the specification of a new radio interface and a new network. There are many players contributing to the development of technology embedded in a common smartphone.

The process can be subdivided in three phases, as shown in Figure 1.

• pre-standard phase, providing the industry vision

• Technical specifications

• Policy and profiling

The setting of requirements is usually elaborated in the pre-standardization phase, often by means of White Papers providing the vision of the industry and associa- tions. Several White Papers have been published by many organizations, e.g. 5G Americas, European Union, NGMN [3] and by many vendors as well. In particular,

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The 5G standardization process 7

Fig. 1 The 5G standardization landscape

the NGMN White Paper elaborates on the new business opportunities brought by 5G, by identifying new industrial vertical1segments interested in exploiting the new technology.

Considering 5G use cases analyses from the cited above organizations, ITU-R defined three main classes of services [4]:

• extreme Mobile Broadband (eMBB) - encompassing all the services deriving from the evolution of traditional Telco Services towards an enhanced user experience (e.g. 3D video, augmented reality);

• massive Machine Type Communications (mMTC) – encompassing all the low power wide area communications established between billions of devices and a cloud, which will create the new Internet of Everything (e.g. ultra low power, low complexity sensors like wearables, utility meters. . . );

• Ultra Reliable and Low Latency Communications (URLLC) – encompassing the capabilities to exchange commands with, and manage the status of, remote objects (e.g. robots, actuators) in a very reliable way and with very low latency (e.g. for remote surgery, remotely controlled vehicles, drone delivery, robot control in factory automation, . . . ).

The subsequent phases of the process (technical specifications and policy and profiling) encompass the following aspects:

Spectrum availability– The main entities, which identify the spectrum needs for mobile communications and the rules for its use, are: ITU-R (during the 1Vertical is a generic name to indicate industries committed to deliver specific applications to the users, which typically falls out of the traditional Telco business

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8 Maria Pia Galante, Giovanni Romano World Radiocommunication Conferences, WRCs [5]) and Regional bodies such as CEPT in Europe. The ultimate owner of the spectrum is the national regulator, that will allocate and license the spectrum.

Technical specifications– the main actor behind 5G technical standards is 3GPP.

The work is however the result of the collaboration with a number of other standards organizations in order to reuse as far as possible best-in-class standardized technologies. A non-exaustive list would include IETF for the IP-based protocols, IEEE for interworking with WiFi access, ETSI for the specifications of the smart card platform which hosts USIM applications, and so on.

Conformance assessment– A device before being commercialized needs to be tested in order to be sure it works as expected. Therefore 3GPP specifies testing procedures which allow certification bodies such as GCF to provide the rules for certification of conformity.

Profiling– GSMA provides any profiling (i.e. selection of the minimum set of capabilities) needed to operate the technology in multi-Operator multi-vendor environment as well as the business rules to ensure, for example, the roaming and interconnection procedures, fraud management and security best practices.

3 ITU-R: IMT-2020 specification

The process leading towards the definition of the radio interface technologies for IMT-2020 is driven by ITU-R Working Group 5D (WP5D). The process started in 2012 when ITU-R decided to initiate work on a technology vision of mobile systems for 2020 and beyond. This first phase of the process led to a number of important results, encompassing [5] [6] [7]:

• The definition of the usage scenarios eMBB, URLLC and mMTC.

• An estimate of the spectrum needed in year 2020 to satisfy the foreseen traffic requirements of mobile communications.

The spectrum estimation led to a requirement ranging from 1300 to 2000 MHz needed for mobile communications [6]. Note that the exercise was made by extrap- olating the traffic data statistics available in 2012 and their forecasts. The traffic amount measured in 2018 appears to be higher than the highest foreseen traffic growth (see Figure 2).

In 2017 WP5D completed the description of the process and time plan, the definition of the minimum technical requirements for inclusion in IMT-2020, and guidelines for their evaluation. Radio Interface Technologies (RITs) or Set of Radio Interface Technologies (SRITs)2are developed externally to ITU-R (e.g. by 3GPP) and submitted to ITU-R for subsequent evaluation and eventually for inclusion in IMT-2020.

2An SRIT is composed by more than one radio interface technologies, complementing each other.

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The 5G standardization process 9

Fig. 2 Mobile traffic forecasts (highest growth forecast) vs actual data growth in [8] [9]

3GPP submitted two proposals named ”5G” (Release 15 and beyond) including an SRIT (encompassing NR and LTE) and an RIT (NR).

After determining which radio interfaces will be part of IMT-2020, by the end of 2020 WP5D will finalize a Recommendation on the technical specifications of the terrestrial component of IMT-2020. This Recommendation will contain a section describing each technology that passed the process.

The process will not be concluded in 2020, but it is expected that WP5D will define the procedure for the development of revisions of the Recommendation on the technical specifications of IMT-2020. As in the case of IMT-2000 and IMT- Advanced, the new Recommendation on IMT-2020 will be periodically revised to consider the evolution of the radio interfaces.

4 3GPP: the 5G roadmap

Following up the vision shaped by pre-standards groups like NGMN, 3GPP started working on 5G within the Release 14 timeframe, from early 2015 to March 2017.

The main outcome of such studies was a set of guidelines for the future design of the 5G system to be pursued in the following releases, in terms of service requirements, reference architecture and the new radio access technology (New Radio, NR) characterized, among other aspects, by the capability to exploit new frequency bands (e.g. in the range 25-52 GHz) thanks to the use of massive MIMO.

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10 Maria Pia Galante, Giovanni Romano

Fig. 3 3GPP 5G Roadmap

Figure 3 provides the 3GPP workplan for 5G system (updated to September 2019). This picture may be not definitive, since 3GPP is always striving to satisfy the different market requirements.

The first normative version of the technical specifications of 3GPP 5G were completed within the Release 15 framework. Therefore, the relevant 3GPP specifications are labelled “5G” starting from that release.

The request from mobile operators to anticipate solutions to commercially launch 5G already in 2019 led 3GPP to split this release in different “drops”: the so called

“Early Drop” delivered in December 2017, the “Regular Drop” in June 2018 and

“Late Drop” in March 2019.

In particular, the Early Drop specifies a deployment option for the NR Non-Stand Alone (NSA), where the radio access network is attached to the 4G Core (EPC).

NR NSA means that the NR cell operate in dual connectivity with another LTE cell which handles the signaling and acts as the primary cell. The focus here is the eMBB use case, driving the first commercial launches worldwide in 2019.

The Regular Drop defines the foundations of the new 5G (5GC) core network, which includes a new service-based architecture with network functions interacting via API, the native support of network slicing, edge computing and the native integration of non-cellular accesses (i.e. untrusted WiFi). A new management system is also defined that evolves from 4G to adapt to the needs of the new 5G Network Func- tions to be managed as well as to the new virtualization deployment set-ups, where the functions are software components no longer constrained on dedicated hardware.

The Regular Drop specifies also the Stand Alone (SA) deployment options, that is the capability for either the NR access and the LTE access to connect independently to such new 5GC.

Finally, the Late Drop adds on the Regular Drop two further NSA access options to the 5G Core: one based on a primary LTE cell supporting NR cell(s) as secondary node(s); the other based on a primary NR cell supporting LTE cell(s) as secondary node(s).

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The 5G standardization process 11 The 5GC based Stand Alone architecture lays the foundations of a new 5G business platform providing communications capabilities for a wide range of new vertical applications, starting from the industrial IoT sector. This potential has been further expanded in the second phase of the 5G specifications (Release 16), whose focus is balanced between the communication needs of verticals and the need for overall improvements of the Release 15 system.

The Release 16 enables the 5G system to support verticals which were only partly supported by 4G with technologies like NB-IoT and C-V2X. In fact, 5GS brings to a new level the support that a mobile system can give to those verticals leveraging the Slicing, the zero touch-automation and API-based design of the new Core. Another important set of enhancements is driven by Industrial IoT and URLLC services for factory automation. The objective of 3GPP here is that 5G covers all the functions that the verticals need for factory automation, e.g. making sure 5G NR can fully replace a wired Ethernet by adding time sensitive networking and high reliability capabilities. The new KPIs for URLLC communications (Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communication), which include very low delays (tens or milliseconds), reliability up to 99.999%, positioning performance up to some tens of cm etc., finds correspondence in a variety of other applications as well (smart grid for energy distribution, Augmented / Virtual Reality for gaming or assisted diagnostics, etc).

More interestingly, these unique KPIs come together with the possibility to deploy local 5G networks completely isolated from a public PLMN resulting in the so called Stand-alone Non-Public Networks which would be owned and operated by non-Telco players. Such deployment options would complement the “private networks” sold by the Operator and implemented by (a set of) "slice" based on a public PLMN network (i.e. the so called Non Stand-alone Non-Public Networks).

On top of new verticals, Release 16 delivers also generic system improvements and enhancements which target eMBB use cases but can also be used in vertical deployments (e.g. MIMO enhancements and Power consumption improvements).

From a system perspective, it is important to note that the Release 16 achieves a further step towards the Wireless-Wireline convergent vision, as it defines the capability for fixed access Residential Gateways to be connected to the 5G Core. This effort, progressed in collaboration with external Fora such as BBF, will enable the new 5G Core to serve all type of accesses (mobile, wireline and public/private WiFi) even providing the Operators wit a policy-based mechanism to steer/switch/split traffic conveyed over those accesses.

While at the time of writing, the activities of Release 16 are concentrated on the completion of the activities by March 2020, 3GPP has already started studies and discussions on the Release 17 possible content. Even if this content will only be decided in December 2019, it can be anticipated that Release 17 will be a relatively short-cycle release focused on the support of more and more verticals (Drones, Audio-visual production, TV Broadcasting and efficient OTT video delivery, . . . ), optimization/improvements of features to better support existing verticals (enhancements to V2X, Industrial IoT, edge computing, network slicing) and on the introduction of new systems features (satellite access integration, multi-USIM support, new device-to-device communications, . . . ). One fundamental aspect which is

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12 Maria Pia Galante, Giovanni Romano likely to characterize and influence more and more future works of 3GPP is the inclusion and the participation, since the early specifications phases, of new Verticals, representing new “consumers” of the 3GPP technologies as they expand towards new markets and new industry sectors.

5 Conclusions

This article describes the main players in 5G standardization, namely ITU-R and 3GPP, without forgetting that successful standards are the result of a complete ecosystem. By the end of 2020, ITU-R WP5D will produce the Recommendation on the technical specifications of the terrestrial component of IMT-2020. 3GPP completed the first version of 5G specifications in Release 15 (June 2018) and this paper provides the planned roadmap and the main expected innovations related to radio access and network.

But the process of standardizing 5G is not static. Standardization bodies are continuously improving the system to address market requirements. Moreover, the coming months, characterized by deployment of the first 5G networks, will be essential to complete the work in progress and address subsequent developments with a view to make 5G an enabling platform for all Gigabit Society services.

References

1. www.3gpp.org.

2. www.itu.int/en/ITU-R/Pages/default.aspxg.

3. www.ngmn.org/work-programme/5g-white-paper.html.

4. “Recommendation itu-r m.2083, framework and overall objectives of the future development of imt for 2020 and beyond,” https://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-M.2083-0-201509-I/en.

5. “World radiocommunication conferences (wrc),” https://www.itu.int/en/ITU- R/conferences/wrc/Pages/default.aspx.

6. “Report itu-r m.2290, future spectrum requirements estimate for terrestrial imt,”

https://www.itu.int/pub/R-REP-M.2290-2014.

7. “Report itu-r m.2370, imt traffic estimates beyond year 2020,” https://www.itu.int/pub/R-REP- M.2370-2015.

8. “Ericsson mobility report, mobile world congress edition, february 2015,”

https://www.ericsson.com/assets/local/mobility-report/documents/2015/ericsson-mobility- report-feb-2015-interim.pdf.

9. “Ericsson mobility report, november 2018,” 2018 https://www.ericsson.com/en/mobility- report/reports/november-2018.

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5G deployment in Europe

Miquel Payaró, Valerio Frascolla, Andreas Georgakopoulos, Panagiotis Demestichas, Carole Manero, Frédéric Pujol

AbstractWe are immersed in a period where a myriad of trials, pilots, and commercial deployments of 5G networks are taking place all over the globe at a speeding pace. In this very dynamic setting, Europe is one of the most active regions in the world thanks to the very ambitious goals put forth in the 5G Action Plan and the commercial drive from the European industry. This chapter presents a concise description of the long term goals, policies, and strategies regarding the deployment of 5G in Europe focusing on four cornerstone areas: 5G trials cities, digital cross- border corridors, Member State initiatives, and commercial launches. It also provides a zoom-in vision in Italy, Greece and Spain, where some of the particularities of each of these Member States are showcased.

1 Introduction

It is forecasted in [1] that, by 2024, the number of 5G subscribers will be in the order of 2 billion worldwide with a coverage of 65 % of the world population. These estimates take, as a starting point, the acceleration in 5G deployment that 2019 has witnessed [2], with 2020 expected to be the year where 5G technology will begin to truly take off with city- and nationwide coverage in many areas of the world

Miquel Payarò

Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya, CTTC/CERCA Valerio Frascolla

Intel Deutschland

Andreas Georgakopoulos, Panagiotis Demestichas WINGS ICT Solutions

Carole Manero, Frédéric Pujol IDATE Digiworld

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14 Payaró et al.

combined with wider availability of 5G devices that will enable new use cases for consumers and vertical sectors, including automotive, health, and the public sector.

It is thus clear that the period when this book chapter is written (November 2019) is a fast-paced one with a myriad of trials, pilots, and commercial deployments taking place. Accordingly, many concrete details and figures related to the deployment of 5G that are true today will become quickly outdated. With this fact in mind, when putting together the contents of this book chapter, an approach has been taken, especially in the sections related to Europe, where presenting long term goals, policies, and strategies has been prioritized over trying to provide a very accurate, yet ephemeral, snapshot of the status of the 5G deployment in Europe. For a concise and up-to-date status of the deployment of 5G, the avid reader is referred to the 5G Market Snapshots [3] of the Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) and the quarterly reports of the 5G Observatory [2], which have also been the main bibliographic source for this book chapter.

The remainder of this book chapter is structured as follows. Section 2 presents a succinct description of the status of the deployment of 5G around the world, which is used to provide an appropriate framework for the contents in Section 3. Section 3, delves into the strategies for 5G deployment in Europe focusing on four cornerstone areas: 5G trials cities, digital cross-border corridors, Member State initiatives, and commercial launches. To finalize Section 3, given the diversity inherent in the EU provided by the different Member States, three examples are highlighted with specific descriptions of the state of play of the 5G deployment in Italy, Greece and Spain.

Finally, Section 4 draws the conclusions of this book chapter.

2 Global perspectives on 5G deployment

The race to deploy and run 5G networks began as early as 2018, with operators from Finland, the United States (US), and South Korea deploying commercial 5G networks. At the moment, these networks were either not fully standard compliant or were lacking small form-factor commercial devices to connect to. In the latter case, 5G networks had to resort to connect to customer premises equipment (CPE) in the case of fixed-wireless access (FWA) or large form-factor prototypes. Through- out 2019, announcements of commercial deployments of 5G have happened in an accelerated way in many areas of the world, with a strong boost coming from China with the start of 5G commercial services. According to the latest GSA report on 5G Trials, Deployments and Launches [4], there are more than 50 operators that have deployed 3GPP-compliant 5G networks in more than 30 countries. In addition, nearly 300 operators in almost 100 countries are actively investing in 5G networks via demonstrations, trials, pilots and other tests.

Until now, the most active countries in the deployment of commercial 5G networks are South Korea and the United States. In Europe, Switzerland has also been one of the most active countries in early 2019 with the deployment of extensive 5G networks in its territory by Swisscom and Sunrise. Another very active country is Australia and

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5G deployment in Europe 15 several countries in the Middle East, especially Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain. In the vast majority of cases, perhaps with the exception of South Korea and Switzerland, coverage is limited to city-center areas in specific densely populated cities. The following paragraphs provide a bit more level of detail in some specific regions in the world.

In Asia, 5G is live in a handful of areas, but widespread coverage isn’t expected until 2020. In South Korea, the figure of 3 million 5G subscriber was surpassed on 9 September, with coverage expected to reach 93 per cent of the population by the end of 2019. Three wireless carriers launched 5G in China on October 31, 2019. However, these companies don’t provide widespread 5G coverage as they are focusing on a number of cities. The most popular areas with 5G in China right now include Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. In Japan, they’ve been studying and experimenting with 5G since 2010 and have launched pre-commercial 5G services in September 2019, with an official launch in the first quarter of 2020 targeting a marketing campaign at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. Regarding the American continent, in the US, 5G fixed wireless broadband internet is currently available at a handful of locations and mobile 5G services are available for selected customers in a few cities. South American countries with the greatest populations will probably see 5G come out in spurts starting in late 2019. For example, in Brazil, after having signed an agreement to help develop and deploy the technology, 5G service is expected to usher starting sometime in 2020. Regarding the frequencies of operation, the vast majority of the 5G networks so far are using two frequency bands: the middle bands, between 3.3 and 4.2 GHz and the very high frequency bands, between 24 and 30 GHz. So far, around a hundred types of 5G devices have been announced and commercially available 5G devices are increasing in number by the day. It will also be in the first months of 2020 when its number will increase decisively, while its price will significantly decrease.

In terms of 5G network performance, most of the commercial networks manage to exceed transmission speeds of one gigabit per second, with a typical maximum speed range between one and five gigabits per second. Regarding achievements in terms of latency, a remarkable reduction with respect to 4G networks has been reported. In most cases, latencies are below 2 ms and some networks have also achieved marks below 1 ms.

Regarding the status of 3GPP standardization, the first deployed 5G networks are operating with existing LTE networks and use the Non-Stand Alone (NSA) mode released in December 2017. Release 15 for 5G New Radio (NR) mode was output in June 2018 and the last addition in Release 15 covering the migration of LTE architectures to 5G was approved in March 2019. Release 16, which has considerable improvements in terms of positioning, lower energy consumption and the use of multi-input multi-output (MIMO) technology is expected to be released by the end of the first quarter in 2020. The completion of Release 16 will give way to Release 17, whose development work has already started with different study items. Therefore, 2020 will be decisive to visualize this progressive and accelerated progress of 5G networks and the reception by their potential users.

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3 5G deployment in Europe

EU’s strategy for the deployment of 5G infrastructures and services across the Digital Single Market by 2020 was put forth on September 2016 with the launch of the 5G Action Plan [5]. This 5G Action Plan defined a roadmap for public and private investment on 5G infrastructure in the EU and set the ambitious objective of having a widespread 5G coverage in the EU by 2025. Following the EU policy perspective, another connectivity objective was added to the regulatory framework with the adoption of the European Electronic Communications Code in December 2018 [6]. This code specified that Member States are required to make 5G pioneer bands (700 MHz, 3.5 GHz and 26 GHz) available by the end of 2020 and also included the availability of uninterrupted 5G coverage for urban areas and major terrestrial transport path. As of November 2019, the scoreboard of the European 5G Observatory shows that 79.8% of the 700 MHz band, 74.8% of the 3.5 GHz band and 96.4% of the 26 GHz band remain unassigned.

The deployment of 5G in Europe can be articulated through four main approaches, three coming from public initiatives and the fourth one stemming from the private side: the 5G trials cities, the digital cross-border corridors, the Member State initiatives, and commercial launches. These four approaches are described in more detail in the following sub-sections.

3.1 5G Trial Cities

Besides what has already been pointed above, the 5G Action Plan also targets the commercial rollout of 5G in at least one major city in every MS by the end of 2020. Specific cities in Europe announced their plans to become 5G Trial Cities, at the forefront of 5G trials and pilots. A non-exhaustive list of 5G Trial Cities include Amsterdam, Aveiro, Barcelona, Bari, Berlin, Bristol, Espoo, Ghent, L’Aquila, London, Madrid, Malaga, Matera, Milan, Oulu, Patras, Prato, Stockholm, Tallinn and Turin [2][4]. These trial cities aim to provide support for a variety of technology and service demonstrations carried out during the 5G trialling phase, and provide valuable vertical use cases especially for Smart City concept to validate the trials in real user environments. When compared to the private sector, public entities such as cities usually have different interests than industry users even in similar use cases focusing, e.g., on eHealth, energy, transport, smart buildings or digital service portals. In all of these domains, shared technology platforms, free access, open data and interfaces as well as the maximal involvement of local ecosystems and residents are common priorities. Maximum involvement of local ecosystems and residents are key priorities.

By the end of September 2019, an estimation of 124 5G-enabled cities were identified by the Member States, which include the realization of 5G pilots and the deployment of 5G live networks. The number of 5G-enabled cities is expected to grow continuously thanks to the foreseen 5G launches.

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5G deployment in Europe 17

3.2 Digital cross-border corridors

Within the European 5G vertical strategy, Connected and Automated Mobility (CAM) is considered as a flagship use case for 5G deployment along European transport paths, in view of creating complete ecosystems around vehicles, beyond the safety services targeted by the Cooperative-Intelligent Transport System (C-ITS) roadmap of Europe [7, 8]. In order to prepare for the deployment of 5G cross- border corridors for CAM, the MSs signed, in March 2017 in Rome, a Letter of Intent with the view to intensify cross-border cooperation for large-scale testing and pre-deployment.

As part of these initiatives described above, three Horizon 2020 projects were launched in November 2018 for the conduct of large-scale testing and trials of 5G connectivity for CAM over cross-border corridors, under the umbrella of the 5G Public Private Partnership (5G PPP). Benefiting from a nearly 50 M€ funding, for a combined total budget of 63 M€, the three projects cover three 5G cross-border corridors: Metz-Merzig-Luxembourg (5GCroCo), Porto-Vigo between Spain and Portugal (5G-Mobix), and Bologna-Munich via the Brenner Path (5G-CARMEN).

See Fig. 1 for more details.

Further funding opportunities are currently available by the EC both under the last phase of Horizon 2020 (ICT-53 call [9], which closed in November 2019) and also planned in the next EU budget proposal. In particular, as part of the next Connecting Europe Facility program (CEF Digital) for 2021-2027 [10]. The CEF Digital program will soon be the subject of the next budget negotiation phase with Member States.

It is expected that public funding for the 5G corridors will amount to a significant part of the 3 G€ requested by the Commission for CEF Digital. The 5G PPP board, co-led by the EC and the 5G Infrastructure Association (private side), has tasked the 5G PPP Automotive Working Group to develop a common Strategic Deployment Agenda (SDA) for CAM of which an initial proposal is already available [11]. The SDA initiative follows high-level discussions held at the Mobile World Congress 2019 in Barcelona, where Mariya Gabriel, Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, and Günther H. Oettinger, Commissioner for Budget and Human Resources, encouraged key representatives of the mobile industry to boost investment in 5G technologies. As pointed out in the initial SDA version [11], the supportive public policy context creates a favorable environment to encourage private investments in large scale deployment of 5G infrastructure, supporting the way to future autonomous mobility. In the next five years, the promoters of the SDA estimate that more than 70

% of new vehicles and other mobility devices will be exchanging data with external sources, bringing new services and business models to automotive and transportation markets.

The initial goal of the SDA is to stimulate investments into the network of pan- European 5G Corridors (see Fig. 1 above) for CAM as a first strategic step towards large scale deployment of 5G for CAM and other high value services related to connected vehicles, road operation and overall smart transportation.

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Fig. 1 5G Cross-border Corridors for Connected and Automated Mobility. Source: EC.

3.3 Member State initiatives

The national 5G strategies adopted to date have a number of facets as the 5G roadmaps set concrete targets, define priority areas and milestones. In particular, in these national strategies, funding methods are presented and discussed, and measures to stimulate and mobilise key players from the telecom and vertical industries are also considered. The progress review made towards 5G market introduction shows various stages as it is detailed next with information updated in September 2019 [2]: Eleven MSs published fully-fledged national 5G roadmaps including spectrum strategies (Austria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands, and the UK). In 2019, six MSs plan to publish their 5G strategies: Cyprus (planned in January 2019, not published yet), Malta (planned in March 2019, not published yet), Hungary (planned April 2019, not published yet), Portugal (planned July 2019, not published yet), Croatia (planned in the last quarter of 2019, not published yet), and Lithuania (planned by end of 2019, not published

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5G deployment in Europe 19 yet). In Hungary, the National Media and Info Communications Authority has not published a fully-fledged 5G roadmap yet, but launched the 5G auction process for the 700, 2100, 2600, and 3600 MHz frequency bands in July 2019. In Romania, following the public consultation on 5G strategy late in 2018, ANCOM published spectrum plans in June 2019. Slovenia asked for comments on its spectrum strategy published in May 2019. In 2019, three MSs updated their national broadband strategies or spectrum strategies: (i) In Austria, the government announced a new national broadband strategy up to 2030 with specific coverage goals (5G coverage along main roads by the end of 2023 and nationwide coverage by the end of 2025).

(ii) In Germany, a new mobile strategy was issued in September 2019. As part of this strategy, an agreement between authorities and 5G spectrum licensees was signed.

The five-point agreement aims at speeding up the planning, approval and development of 5G networks. In particular, it includes measures to position Germany as a 5G market leader. (iii) In the Netherlands, the new spectrum plan schedules a multi-band spectrum auction (700, 1400, 2100, 3500 MHz) for the first quarter of 2020.

3.4 Commercial launches

In the EU, the process of awarding licenses by auction delayed the start of commercial launches, which nonetheless started in 2019. For example, Italy, which completed the auction at the end of 2018, has already commercial services in several cities through two operators and coverage is increasing each month.

Under that particular European setting, during the first nine months of 2019, many European mobile operators were preparing the commercial phase as the first 5G smartphones started to become available [2]. Commercial services are now available in a number of cities in Europe and deployments are on-going with tens of basestations to be lighted in many European cities. More concretely, the following European MSs enjoy 5G services (including FWA) to date: Austria, Finland, Estonia, Germany (2), Ireland, Italy (2), Spain, and the UK (4), where the numbers in brackets indicate the number of 5G service providers in case that there is more than one.

Additional launches are expected in the remainder of 2019 and throughout 2020.

3.5 5G deployment examples in selected Member States

The following three subsections provide a higher level of detail on the activities related to 5G deployment in three selected European Member States: Italy (as it is the main focus of this book), Greece and Spain.

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20 Payaró et al.

3.5.1 Italy

Italy is a frontrunner in 5G systems deployments in Europe. As detailed below, already in 2017 experimental trials were run in 5 cities and, as of October 2019, two operators have up and running commercial networks in the country.

Regarding pre-commercial trials, the Ministry of Economic Development (Minis- tero dello Sviluppo Economico, also known as MISE [12]) started in 2017 to allocate radio spectrum (i.e. contiguous 100 MHz around the 3.7 GHz band) in five key locations, spread between the traditional three parts Italians consider their county split:

the North, the Center and the South. Those 5 locations are:

- Two big cities: one in the north (Milano) and one in the south (Bari),

- Three small cities: one in the center (Prato), two in the south (L’Aquila and Matera).

Regarding the cities in the South of Italy, their choice was mainly based on societal and economic reasons: Matera was chosen in 2015 as the European capital of culture 2019, and therefore one of the best places to show the capability of the new 5G technology; L’Aquila was chosen in order to give its people a hope after the devastating earthquake that stroke the city in 2009. Licenses for running those trials were granted for a duration of four years, expecting therefore to be terminated at the end of 2021. The operators that are currently running experiments are Vodafone (Milano), Wind Tre and Open Fiber (Prato and L’Aquila), and TIM, Fastweb and Huawei (Bari and Matera).

Spectrum auction: The spectrum auction for the allocation of commercial services of the new 5G NR frequency bands started in September 2018 and ended one month afterwards. Italy auctioned a total of three bands, i.e.:

- N28 (700 MHz), - N78 (3.7GHz), - N257 (26 GHz).

At the end of the auction, overall around 6.5 M€ were spent by the following operators to have assigned the 5G NR frequencies:

- Fastweb: 26 GHz (200 MHz),

- Iliad: 700 MHz (2x10 MHz), 3.7 GHz (20 MHz), 26 GHz (200 MHz), - TIM: 700 MHz (2x10 MHz), 3.7 GHz (80 MHz), 26 GHz (200 MHz),

- VODAFONE: 700 MHz (2x10 MHz), 3.7 GHz (80 MHz), 26 GHz (200 MHz), - Wind Tre: TIM: 3.7 GHz (20 MHz), 26 GHz (200 MHz).

Operators will split payments to the Italian government in the period 2018-2021.

As far as 5G Commercial services is concerned, Vodafone was the first operator to officially launch in Italy in June 2019 a 5G commercial service called ‘Giga Network 5G’. As of October 2019, some parts of the cities of Milano, Bologna, Torino, Roma, and Napoli are covered by the service. No further locations are planned for 2019, but Vodafone set the target to cover 100 main cities and key touristic locations by 2021.

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5G deployment in Europe 21 TIM activated, just few days after Vodafone in June 2019, its 5G services, which as of October 2019 are active in Torino, Roma, Firenze and Napoli. By the end of 2019, TIM plans to start operating also in Milano, Bologna, Verona, Matera, and Bari. The network expansion plan foresees the coverage of 120 cities, 200 touristic destinations and 245 big industrial areas.

Wind Tre is currently trialing its network, however it has not yet launched 5G services but plans to do so before the end of the year.

Iliad and Fastweb are also experimenting on their networks but have made public no official plans, nor timelines for launch of commercial 5G services.

Finally, it is worth mentioning the announcement made by an Austrian full mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) called Spusu. It will lean on the Wind Tre network to offer its services, planned to start in Q1 2020.

Finally, regarding research activities related to 5G deployments, Italian Small and Medium Enterprise (SME), industry, universities, research centers, and governmen- tal institutions are heavily involved in, and active contributors to, several international research projects, aiming at bringing forward the reach of new technologies like 5G.

As an example of an interesting ongoing project focusing on cross-countries corridors, the project 5G-CARMEN [13], which started in November 2018 and has already been briefly listed in Section 3.2, is actively working with the aim of driving the research, implementation, and demonstration of 5G solutions for the Coopera- tive, Connected, and Automated Mobility (CCAM). 5G-CARMEN, focusing on the infrastructure corridor Bologna – Munich, which passes through the countries of Italy, Austria and Germany, aims at conducting cross-border trials of 5G technologies in four major use cases: cooperative maneuvering, situation awareness, video streaming, and green driving.

3.5.2 Greece

Two verticals which benefit from 5G deployments in Greece are monitoring of aquaculture production as well as touristic services through an AR/VR-enhanced bus.5G in tourism services trials: Specifically, in the wider frame of tourism, deployment of 5G can provide novel services when people are transported on buses during a visit in a site of interest. In this context, such a deployment involves passengers travelling to a destination of educational or general interest during a field trip or excursion. As such, use case deals in particular with the rich learning opportunities that arise when students participate in educational trips. The overall goal is to prove in practice how 5G technologies can enable rich, digitally enhanced experiences on the go: directly, learning experiences for students and indirectly, information, learning and entertainment experiences for everyone transported on a bus to a destination of interest.

5G in aquaculture trials: Another area where 5G deployment can bring certain ben- efits is in cross-border aquaculture use cases. This pilot is being deployed in Greece with the support of the 5G-EVE node [14]. This pilot is also being complemented

Dynamic mobile base stations in 5G networks :

The 5G Italy Book 2019:

a Multiperspective View of 5G

Edited by:

Marco Ajmone Marsan Nicola Blefari Melazzi Stefano Buzzi

Sergio Palazzo

Preface

Acknowledgements

Contents

Edited by:

Raffaele Bolla

University of Genova and CNIT

Giovanni Schembra

University of Catania

The 5G standardization process

5G deployment in Europe