Warsaw-based LTE/LTE-Advanced IPR provider IS-Wireless has acquired funds for research on 5G radio interfaces. The funding is done through participation in 5GNOW European research project under the 7th Framework Program of EU. 5GNOW stands for 5th Generation Non-Orthogonal Waveforms for Asynchronous Signaling and is supported by the European Commission comprising altogether 6 partners from Germany, France, Poland and Hungary.

LTE and LTE-Advanced have been optimized to deliver high bandwidth pipes to wireless users. The transport mechanisms have been tailored to maximize single cell performance by enforcing strict synchronism and orthogonality within a single cell and within a single contiguous frequency band. Various emerging trends reveal major shortcomings of those design criteria:

• The fraction of machine-type-communications (MTC) is growing fast. Transmissions of this kind are suffering from the bulky procedures necessary to ensure strict synchronism.
• Collaborative schemes have been introduced to boost capacity and coverage (CoMP), and wireless networks are becoming more and more heterogeneous following the non-uniform distribution of users. Tremendous efforts must be spent to collect the gains and to manage such systems under the premise of strict synchronism and orthogonality.
• The advent of the Digital Agenda and the introduction of carrier aggregation are forcing the transmission systems to deal with fragmented spectrum.

5GNOW will question the design targets of LTE and LTE-Advanced having these shortcomings in mind. The obedience of LTE and LTE-Advanced to strict synchronism and orthogonality will be challenged. 5GNOW will develop new PHY and MAC layer concepts being better suited to meet the upcoming needs with respect to service variety and heterogeneous transmission setups. A demonstrator will be built as Proof-of-Concept. 5GNOW will build upon continuously growing capabilities of silicon based processing.

"5GNOW project ambitiously targets new PHY and MAC layers for systems beyond LTE/LTE-Advanced, which would be better suited for such applications like Machine-Type-Communications (MTC). Our role is primarily in MAC design, where we are a Work Package leader and in LTE/LTE-A PHY referencing,"  says Dr. Slawomir Pietrzyk, IS-Wireless’ CEO.

The consortium, includes Alcatel Lucent, National Instruments, Fraunhofer, CEA Leti and TU Dresden.