5G Era: Explorations and Developments

Dear Colleagues,

With a number of 5G trials underway in several parts of the world, and Release 15 of 3GPP’s 5G New Radio (NR) already deployed in several countries across the globe, fifth generation (5G) wireless networks are literally here. The development of 5G standards has been both faster and more ambitious than previous generations of wireless networks: 5G addresses a wide range of services with very different specifications, and targets a variety of vertical sectors (including manufacturing, media, eHealth, energy, automotive, and smart cities, among several others) that constitute an important part of the global economy.

While the initial 5G standard (3GPP Release 15) is in place, the gap to bring 5G into business remains huge, in addition to the evolution towards future releases. 5G aims to natively support enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), massive machine type communication (mMTC), and ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) services in a single infrastructure. It brings enormous opportunities for many vertical sectors, such as automobile, industry automation, media, and health, just to list a few, to expand and renew their business or make them more efficient. To allow the coexistence of services with very different natures, 5G has introduced innovations from spectrum access, air interface, system architecture, network function virtualization in radio and core network, end-to-end network slicing, security, privacy, service orchestration, etc. All new 5G features and functions need to be extensively verified and optimized before the commercial rollout of 5G networks. It is essential to test 5G features in complex deployed environments, identifying and solving coverage, interoperability, compatibility, and service provisioning problems, and to ensure that 5G can meet the requirements of the various vertical sectors. In particular, the support of vertical sector services will need new measurement and test methods. Due to the complexity of 5G systems, many practical and theoretical challenges will need to be verified and solved during 5G trials, the way forward will need to be defined, and immediate next steps must be taken to ensure the ubiquitous adoption of 5G globally.

This Special Issue targets scientific contributions on new findings of 5G trials and developments in vertical industries including but not limited to manufacturing, automotive, healthcare, media, and new business development. We particularly seek papers concerning long-standing cases that have been sufficiently tested and evaluated, through analytical, simulation, or experimental models (hopefully in combination), as well as theoretical results based on realistic deployment schemes and new 5G business models. Extensions to previously published works will be accepted, provided that this fact is clearly stated in the submission and the new contribution is significant.

In this context, we are envisaging works covering one or more of the following 5G topics, with vertical implementation and evaluation as an overall concern and overarching aspect:

5G research in multiple vertical industries

• Manufacturing;
• Automotive/transport;
• Healthcare;
• Media;
• Energy;
• Aquaculture;
• Logistics;
• Other sectors;

5G trial development

• 5G trial cases and results;
• 5G testbed implementation;
• New test technologies;

Verticals and new services

• C-V2X;
• Applications of mMTC;
• Applications of URLLC;
• New/innovative services enabled by 5G;

Measurement and evaluation

• 5G new radio;
• Radio access network;
• Core network;
• Backhaul;
• Fronthaul;
• NFV/SDN implementation;
• Network slicing;
• D2D communications;
• Mobile edge computing;
• Test result analysis;

Network deployment and optimization

• 5G network planning;
• Network deployment optimization;
• End-to-end performance optimization;

Security and privacy aspects;

5G business model evaluation;

5G standards and implementation.

Dr. Konstantinos Katsaros
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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• 5G research
• 5G trial development
• verticals and new services
• measurement and evaluation
• network deployment and optimization
• security and privacy
• 5G business model evaluation
• 5G standards and implementation