White Paper 1:

Wireless To The X: Extend 5G to Wireless Broadband Access

Executive Summary
To bridge the digital divide between developed and developing countries or areas, while in the same time to further
bring high data rate service to home, office, train and other scenarios to enable a fully-connected world, extending wireless
access to provide broadband access for full services and scenarios i.e., Wireless To The x (WTTx), becomes a promising
solution. WTTx is introduced to provide broadband access for a variety of scenarios, including business, home access in
rural, sub-urban and dense urban areas, and even broadband access in high speed trains for both developing and developed
areas to address the reliable high data rate access using cost efficient and affordable way, thus avoiding the complicated
requirement on fiber, cable or copper deployment. The advantages of wireless broadband access over fixed broadband
access are cost-efficiency and flexible-deployment for a given required quality of service. In addition, thanks to the
advanced 5G radio interface, WTTx enhanced by 5G technologies has great potential to provide higher data rate and
lower latency service, thus becomes more competitive to existing fixed broadband solutions. The most challenging
requirements of WTTx are long coverage range (e.g., 3-5km for rural), high user experience data rate (e.g.,
200Mbps/40Mbps for downlink/uplink in dense urban), and high spectral efficiency (e.g., 2-2.5 times of 5G requirement
for cell average spectral efficiency, and 5.6-9 times of 5G requirement for cell edge spectral efficiency). Furthermore,
duplexing flexibility is required to flexibly match the radio resource with the varying downlink/uplink traffic patterns to
achieve higher efficiency. To fulfill the requirements of WTTx, both architecture enhancement and air interface
improvement should be taken into account. In terms of architecture, wireline service over wireless and wireless-wireline
convergence based solutions are proposed, and they can be implemented together with 5G network slicing technology to
ensure the user experience for both WTTx and MBB users. For air interface, advanced multiple-input multiple output
(MIMO) technologies are used to compensate the fading due to long range communication, and meanwhile to further
increase the spectral efficiency with spatial multiplexing. New waveform, frame structure and higher order modulation
scheme (e.g., 1024QAM) are also proposed to further improve the capacity of the link between base station and customer
premise equipment (CPE). In order to further improve the end-to-end user experience, the access link between CPE (or
its connected forwarding point) and users could be enhanced by more advanced technology, e.g., visible light based
communication to offer rate of tens or hundreds of Gbps.

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Table of Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ................................................................................................................................................................... 1

1. BACKGROUND .......................................................................................................................................................................... 5

1.1 BRIDGING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE ........................................................................................................................... 5

1.2 BRINGING HIGH DATA RATE TO HOME................................................................................................................. 6
1.3 WIRELESS TO THE X ........................................................................................................................................... 7

2. OPPORTUNITY OF WIRELESS AND 5G ............................................................................................................................ 7

2.1 ADVANTAGES OF WIRELESS OVER FIXED FIBER .................................................................................................. 7

2.2 OPPORTUNITY OF 5G .......................................................................................................................................... 7

3. EXTENDING 5G TO WIRELESS BROADBAND: USE CASES AND KEY REQUIREMENTS..................................... 8

3.1 USE CASES ......................................................................................................................................................... 8

3.1.1 Rural ......................................................................................................................................................... 8
3.1.2 Dense Urban ............................................................................................................................................. 9
3.1.3 Suburban ................................................................................................................................................... 9
3.1.4 High Speed Train ...................................................................................................................................... 9
3.2 REQUIREMENTS ................................................................................................................................................ 10
3.2.1 Service Requirements ............................................................................................................................. 10
3.2.2 Technical Requirements.......................................................................................................................... 11

4. ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES .............................................................................................................................................. 14

4.1 POTENTIAL ARCHITECTURE .............................................................................................................................. 14

4.2 5G AIR INTERFACE AND ITS EVOLUTION ........................................................................................................... 15
4.3 VISIBLE LIGHT.................................................................................................................................................. 22

5. SUMMARY ............................................................................................................................................................................... 22

REFERENCE ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 23

ABBREVIATION ............................................................................................................................................................................. 23

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ................................................................................................................................................................. 24

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1. Background
The IMT-2020 radio interface technology (also known as 5G – the fifth generation) is under development in ITU-R
and 3GPP. 5G system is expected to provide at least 3 times spectrum efficiency compared to 4G (or IMT-Advanced),
more than 100Mbps user experienced data rate for downlink in dense urban or hotspot areas, and 0~500km/h mobility
support. At the meantime, it aims to provide good coverage and 100 times network energy efficiency compared to 4G
systems. This highly capable system is expected to provide good user experience for enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB),
large connection density for massive machine type communication (mMTC), and low latency and high reliability for
ultra-reliable and low latency communication (URLLC).

On the other hand, broadband access, which is traditionally provided by fixed connections like fibers, cables, or copper
etc., is also progressing and demands higher data rates and is expanding to more users. However, broadband access is
limited in rural areas due to the difficulty of deploying fibers and cables, which leads to digital divide especially in
developing countries and areas. And in urban areas and developed areas, the deployment of fibers or cables may also be
challenging due to the policy and cost of deployment, which may limit the broadband access from home to achieve high
data rate for a variety of services.

To address the challenges in traditional fixed broadband (FBB) access, 5G radio technology can be a promising
alternative to provide wireless broadband (WBB) access in different environment and use cases, including bridging the
digital divide, bringing high data rate to home, and other access scenarios. The following illustrates this concept in more
details.

1.1 Bridging the digital divide

International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) releases “The State of Broadband” every year, which summarizes the current wireless development in global
wide. For fixed broadband, it is estimated by ITU that by 2019 there would be 4 billion internet users over the world,
which is still a quite small portion compared with the global population [1].

In addition, “The State of Broadband 2015” showed an investigation about proportion of Households with Broadband
(HBB) internet access. The world average level is about 40%, however, quite a large divide between developed and
developing countries or areas was observed. For example, developed countries have over 80% HBB, while for developing
countries it is much lower - only 30%. Specifically, Europe has the highest percentage of HBB, i.e., 82.1%, and America
has more than 60%. However in Asia & Pacific, this number is less than 40%. Especially, in Africa, no more than 10%
of households have broadband access to Internet. There are huge digital divide about broadband access among the
developing countries [1].

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Figure1 Proportion of households with broadband internet access (HBB)

Regarding the average access speed, approximately 80% of the world is less than 10Mbps. The developed countries
could ensure 50% of area with larger than 10Mbps broadband access, while more than 90% area of developing countries
only has less than 4Mbps access. Although half of the world has connected to Internet, high speed broadband access only
serves very small number of people. In terms of access speed, the huge digital divide about broadband access between
different countries and different areas in the country or regions still exists.

In these areas, 5G radio technology is an attracting approach to provide quick deployment and enable the broadband
access to bridge the digital divide. This is because radio access does not require the deployment of fibers or cables which
may require quite a lot of efforts and unaffordable cost in those developing areas. 5G radio technology would be cost
effective and fast to deploy, and can adapt the radio resource to the desired areas for broadband access. For developing
areas, it is expected to provide much higher data rate to much wider areas with lower cost.

For developed areas, it is expected to provide higher data rate than current access speed with new services and
requirements. New services such as IPTV, home surveillance and virtual presence, need higher date rate, lower latency
and stronger robustness communication network, and wireless broadband could be an economic choice.

1.2 Bringing high data rate to home

The prosperous Internet request much more capacity, faster speed and lower latency of communication than before. In
household scenario, people usually used chat room, QQ and Standard Definition (SD) video in the past. Nowadays, IPTV,
online 1080P or Blu-ray video, smart home, real-time surveillance, various equipment access and frequently huge data
uploading and downloading are major service that users need.

The commons of new service are real-time, low latency and huge data transmitting. Traditional x Digital Subscriber
Line (xDSL) or copper might be difficult to meet these demands, while home broadband with fiber might be costly.
Wireless access using advanced radio technology is a hopeful alternative in these scenarios.

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1.3 Wireless To The x

Based on above observations, using wireless access to provide broadband access is an attractive solution in many kinds
of scenarios and use cases. “Wireless To The x (WTTx)” concept is introduced to broadband access for a variety of
scenarios, including business, home access in rural, sub-urban and dense urban areas, and even in high speed trains for
both developing and developed areas to address the reliable high data rate access using cost efficient and affordable way,
while avoiding the complicated requirement on fiber, cable or copper deployment.

2. Opportunity of Wireless and 5G

2.1 Advantages of wireless over fixed fiber

WTTx is proposed to provide diverse services to home/office/ enterprise and to bridge the digital divide. Traditional
fixed access like copper or fiber could provide high quality, steady and fast data service in dense population area and even
rural houses. However, high cost of deploying fiber/copper is one of the most significant shortcomings in fixed access
especially in some sparse population area. Compared that one single fiber could provide hundreds of households the
Internet access in dense urban, single line of fixed access could only provide a fewer households in rural scenario, which
means much more construction cost, longer Return of Investment (ROI) and highly expensive maintenance. In addition,
in certain urban scenario, fixed fiber service could be protested due to trespass or property management.

The advantages of wireless over fixed fiber are low-cost and rapid-deployment given a certain requirement on quality
of service. Wireless broadband coverage is the best fit for rural scenario, for its flat ground and barely shadow. Base
station in rural often has surplus spectrum resources due to relative low radio resource utilization, so the wireless
broadband service could be provided based on existing spectrum available. The user only needs a Customer Premise
Equipment (CPE) indoor/outdoor in home for identification, without decorating or destroying wall. With the development
of air-interface technologies like Multiple-input-Multiple-output (MIMO), beamforming and higher frequency, WTTx
could achieve even the same peak bit rate in leisure time and protective bit rate in busy time as fixed fiber.

2.2 Opportunity of 5G

5G radio interface is now being developed in ITU-R and 3GPP. With the design principles of forward compatibility,
5G radio interface is developed to enable the utilization of the wide range of spectrum from sub 6GHz to above 6GHz in
a unified air interface manner. Therefore it has the potential to use large bandwidth and aggregate them in different
frequency ranges.

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In addition, 5G radio interface also aims to provide good coverage by using technologies like massive MIMO, advanced
and hybrid beamforming, and the flexible frame structure and numerology could be adapted when necessary to adjust the
coverage to achieve a better tradeoff between coverage and capacity, e.g., by using flexible duplex / dynamic TDD to
adapt the Downlink (DL)/Uplink (UL) subframe to enlarge DL/UL coverage instantaneously.

Therefore, 5G radio technology has a great potential to provide high data rate with large coverage which is desired by
broadband access in the interested use cases and achieve the key requirements, which are discussed in details in next
section.

3. Extending 5G to Wireless Broadband: Use Cases

and Key Requirements

3.1 Use Cases

For WTTx, four typical use cases are identified as rural, dense urban, suburban and high speed train. Note that for
different use cases, the deployment scenarios, relevant service and technical requirements would be different, leading to
different technical solutions for each use case. The detailed descriptions of these use cases are given as below.

3.1.1 Rural

Single house is a typical use case in rural where the base stations are usually deployed with a large inter-site distance
(ISD), thus the challenge is mainly in terms of the coverage capability. Although in rural scenario there is nearly no
obstacle for wave transmission, the possible heavy foliage around the house may still lead to low line of sight (LoS) signal
percentage and large path loss, especially for high frequency range. Therefore, outdoor CPE with low carrier frequency
(e.g., 3.5GHz) is expected to be deployed in order to meet the long range coverage performance requirement. In addition,
the CPE should be mounted high to increase the coverage area, and LoS transmission would be preferred via a receiver
placed on top of the roof of houses to guarantee the reliable connection.
Traditional xDSL based solutions could provide a cost competitive service for the users in rural scenario, but as more
diverse applications are emerging, the transmission capacity of xDSL would become the bottleneck to improve the users’
experience. On the contrary, WTTx could provide broadband peak bit rate up to 1 Gbps with the comparable cost to xDSL.
One shortcoming of WTTx is that the outdoor CPE installation should be operated by professional workers, as the position
and orientation of CPE have significant influence on the quality of received signal, thus the deployment cost might be
high. However, CPE in rural could efficiently utilize the surplus spectrum resources to achieve high capacity. As more
CPEs can share the spectrum resources, the advantage of long term ROI of WTTx could be more competitive.

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3.1.2 Dense Urban

Multiple Dwelling Unit (MDU) is a typical use case in dense urban, and has large density of households which are
difficult and complex for fiber to reach. Due to the high density of buildings, the blockage caused by adjacent buildings
would severely reduce the received power of desired signals, thus high frequency deployment (e.g., with millimeter wave)
may lead to coverage hole. In addition, for MDU it might be difficult to install the CPEs on the wall or above the rooftop
due to the unavailability of locations and its impact on the overall building appearance. Therefore, deploying CPEs with
low carrier frequency (e.g., at 3.5 GHz) indoors might be a promising solution, and it could provide a better tradeoff
between coverage and capacity due to the propagation behavior and potential large amount of bandwidth.
Note that FTTH might be deployed in MDU in dense urban, and compared with FTTH, the advantage of WTTx is mainly
in terms of the fast deployment and low cost. Moreover, wireless broadband could make hybrid access with existing wired
access solutions, in order to combine the advantages of wired access (e.g., high reliability and availability) and wireless
access (e.g., quick and flexible deployment, inexpensive cost) to meet the diverse requirements of different operators.

3.1.3 Suburban

In suburban scenario, there is also nearly no obstacle for wave transmission, but an about double amount of UEs
compared to rural area need to be served. In order to provide services of high quality to more UEs in a nearly line of sight
propagation environment, high frequency (e.g., millimeter wave) might be a promising candidate as a large amount of
bandwidth can be achieved. In addition, in order to avoid the impact of outdoor to indoor penetration loss caused by the
building, which would significantly reduce the signal strength especially for high frequency bands, CPEs are desired to
be deployed outside of the house, e.g., mounted on the external wall. Given the circumstance, CPEs with high frequency
(e.g., 28GHz or even higher) could be installed to satisfy high data service like data upload/download and real-time
meeting/surveillance. In this use case, the biggest challenge to implement WTTx is to reduce the impact of foliage loss
and other additional fading. Considering the potential bandwidth amount and the propagation characteristic, some carrier
frequency at lower frequency range, e.g., 3.5GHz, could also be utilized to provide high data rate service.

3.1.4 High Speed Train

High Speed Train (HST) is one of the popular means for medium to long distance travel, and can be deployed in more
and more countries and cities for transport. As a special scenario, HST can be regarded as the combination of home and
office hot spots. While during traveling there will be a growing demand of mobile service in trains, passengers’ broadband
services including information search, online game, video/audio on demand, emails, instant messengers, video/internet
conference, etc.
In general, mobile communications under high speed scenario face the challenges of the rapid change of the wireless
communication environment, the Doppler frequency shift, the penetration loss, the mobility management, the frequent
group switching and system capacity planning. Meanwhile, with the rapidly developing new types of the mobile
equipment such as smart-phones and IPAD, the train passengers, particularly for those traveling for a long time, are
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desired access to broadband wireless communications while on train. However, the demand for HST scenarios is far
from being met. For example, consists of eight cars, the total length of the train is 200 meters, carry the number of
passengers for the 1000 people, and they are in the high speed sports (the current operating speed of 350km/h, in
the near future will be increased to 500km/h). Assuming that 30% of the users in the train are active, the average
rate of demand for per user is 5Mbps (downlink) & 2.5Mbps (uplink); considering 100MHz band in 3.5GHz, the
corresponding system spectrum efficiency is 15bps/Hz (downlink) and 7.5bps/Hz (uplink), respectively. Actually,
the active rate of HST users may be higher, and the broadband service requirements are more video/audio, so it is
extremely challenging to meet the potential communication needs of HST.
In this use case, one of the goals of WTTx is to provide high data rate access to users and high spectrum efficiency in
which the terminal movement can reach speeds of 500km/h.

The following table summarizes the use cases in which WTTx could be applied and the competitive advantages for
WTTx compared to the current solutions.

Table 3.1 Comparison of potential deployment solutions under different use cases
Use case Frequency CPE deployment Current solution WTTx advantages
Increased data rate,
Rural 3.5GHz Outdoor (rooftop) xDSL
Reduced cost
Dense Urban 3.5GHz Indoor FTTH Reduced Cost
Indoor / Outdoor (wall- Reduced Cost
Suburban 3.5GHz / 28GHz FTTH
mounted)
Increased data rate,
High speed train 3.5GHz Indoor - improved spectrum
efficiency

It is worth noting that for dense urban, it is possible to multiplex existing infrastructure with 5G eMBB to further reduce
the deployment cost. Moreover, for suburban scenario it is expected to utilize both high frequency and low frequency to
meet the coverage and capacity requirements at the same time, which remarkably increases the spectrum resource
utilization, improves the transmission capability and decreases the single line cost. Furthermore, for high speed train
scenario it is expected to use high bandwidth access to meet the requirement of high date rate and high spectrum efficiency.

3.2 Requirements

3.2.1 Service Requirements

Generally, the prosperity and evolution of Internet bring various new services like IPTV, smart home, Virtual Reality,
Augmented Reality and Enterprise, etc. So the requirement to communication system is becoming more and more
challenging.

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To be specific, some key applications and their service requirements are highlighted as below.
IPTV. IPTV is defined as multimedia services such as television/video/audio/text/graphics/data delivered over IP based
networks managed to provide the required level of quality of service and experience, security, interactivity and reliability
[2]. Wireless broadband could provide 2 tunnels of communication channel which is able to carry both IPTV and
broadband Internet. IPTV includes multicast and unicast, by using different protocols in application layer. IPTV service
has strict requirement on steady and sustainable data rate of 50Mbps, for insurance of the fluent real-time video. And
IPTV could endure a latency about several seconds of video. Usually, every household only need one connection of IPTV
service.

In the past two years, global operators have made 4K video services, both from content, platform, fixed network and
mobile network, and so on, all through the 4K video service to achieve the strategic layout of high-bandwidth business.
At present, the focus is mainly on providing IPTV and other 4K video services with fixed network. With the improvement
of screen size, resolution, battery and memory capacity of smart terminals, it would be feasible to provide users with
mobile 4K video experience.

AR/VR. Virtual reality (VR) is a computer technology that generating realistic images, sounds and other sensations
that simulating a user's physical presence in a virtual or imaginary environment [3]. Augmented reality (AR) is a live
direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are "augmented" by computer-generated or
extracted real-world sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data [4].

Obviously, AR/VR communication needs solid and seamless coverage of wireless network in office environment or
outdoor scenario. And high bandwidth and low latency should also be satisfied. The roundtrip delay should be less than
4 ms. 8K stereo/250 Mbps should be equipped for both uplink and downlink [2].

Smart Home. Smart Home has various requirements for communication, such as security, monitoring, health,
automation and entertainment. Smart home needs a center brain to handle all the information in house and communicate
with remote equipment. That is exactly what CPE does. CPE is a born portal for smart home, building the data pipe and
cloud, collecting and processing all the information to give response.

CPE should be flexible and nearly almighty to meet various smart home requirements. For example, household
monitoring should be able to record the video and transmit the real-time video to remote device, requiring both high bit
rate and low latency of wireless broadband. Health in smart home may not need high data rate, but need low latency and
high reliability. The number of connection device of smart home is large, so the CPE should carry all the devices and
meet various requirements at the same time.

3.2.2 Technical Requirements

The following figure illustrates the methodology of deriving the technical performance requirements of WTTx.
Generally speaking, the key advantage of WTTx, i.e., lower single-line cost, should be maintained. Based on this single-
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line cost constraint, together with the cost of a single site, the expected served CPE number of site can then be derived.
Considering the population density and service activation level, the coverage range of a site and then the required
Minimum Coupling Loss (MCL) can be derived. Combining the per site CPE number with the service requirement per
CPE, we can get the required cell throughput and then required spectral efficiency performance.

CPE density

Single-line cost
requirement Requirement of Requirement of
(Hypothesis in single station single station Requirement of
capacity, frequency CPE number coverage range MCL (dB)
and bandwidth of
(m)
indoor/outdoor CPE)

Requirement of Requirement of
user (CPE) Requirement of cell average
experienced data cell throughput spectral
rate in busy time (bps) efficiency
(bps) (bps/Hz/cell)

Bandwidth Requirement of
cell edge
spectral
efficiency
(bps/Hz)
Figure 3.2.2 Methodology of deriving technical requirements of WTTx

Based on the methodology mentioned above, together with some assumed deployed solutions and service parameters,
we can get the technical requirements of WTTx as below. Note that the assumptions on carrier frequency and bandwidth
are for information, and with different assumptions the technical requirements of each use case could be different.

Table 3.2.2 Technical requirements of WTTx for different use cases (for information)

Use case Rural Dense Urban Suburban High Speed Train

Deployment* 3.5GHz- 3.5GHz-indoor 28GHz-wall 3.5GHz-indoor
outdoor CPE CPE mounted CPE CPE
Communication
DL UL DL UL DL UL DL UL
mode
Requirement of
single station UE
~200 ~40 ~130 ~1000
number (users/cell)*
*
Requirement of
single station
3~5 0.5~1 1~2 0.8~1.732
coverage range
(km)** *

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Busy time activation

10%~20% 20%~35% 20%~35% ~30%
ratio (%)
Active users number
10 15~50 10~30 300
(active users/cell)
Requirement of user
experienced data
50 10 200 40 200 40 50 25
rate in busy time
(Mbps)
Effective bandwidth
100 100 800 100
(MHz)
Requirement of cell
average spectrum
efficiency (2x~2.5x) (1.8x~2.1x) (0.8x) (0.4x)
(Compared with 5G
eMBB)
Requirement of cell
edge spectrum
efficiency (5.6x~9x) (6.4x~7.1x) (2.7x~3.0x) -
(Compared with 5G
eMBB)
Note:
* This is the deployment example for information, and other deployment solutions are not precluded.
** The requirement of single station coverage range is dependent on the household (HH) density. The house density assumptions
are 10HH/km2, 1517HH/km2 and 500HH/km2 for rural, dense urban and suburban, respectively.
***The single station UE number is related to the cost of baseline solution. For rural, the baseline is home wired broadband. For
dense urban, larger single station UE number is expected if WTTx is deployed hybrid with outdoor CPEs.

From the above table, it is shown that the three major aspects of technical requirement should be taken into account as
below.
Coverage range. The single station coverage range is different for these use cases. In rural use case, the required
coverage range is 3~5km, which is much larger than those of dense urban (0.5~1km) and suburban (1~2km). It is because
in rural scenario, each station has to provide service to more users in order to reduce the single line cost to compete with
existing solutions. . In HST use case, the distance of station is 0.8~1.732km to provide belt coverage.
User experienced data rate. For rural use case, the DL and UL required data rate are 50Mbps and 10Mbps,
respectively. However, for dense urban and suburban, as more expensive service packages are provided, higher data rate
(e.g., 200Mbps for DL and 40Mbps for UL) can be guaranteed. Furthermore, for HST use case, the user experienced data
rates are 50Mbps for DL and 25Mbps for UL.
Spectral efficiency. Due to the large amount of active users per cell and the high data rate required by each user, WTTx
has to provide quite high spectral efficiency performance. To be specific, the average spectral efficiency is up to 2x~2.5x
compared with the 5G eMBB requirements. For cell edge spectral efficiency, even higher efficiency, e.g., up to 5.6x~9x
of 5G eMBB requirements needs to be ensured.

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Other technical requirements to enable the deployment of wireless broadband services are discussed as below.
Duplexing Flexibility. It should be noted that different duplexing requirements should be satisfied for different end-
users. For example, when it is to support IPTV and home users, more bandwidth should be allocated to downlink, while
in the same time and location, uplink-dominated applications might also be activated to support the media broadcast and
the use of social media. Therefore, the WTTx should be able to flexibly adjust the transmission mode to meet various
asymmetric bandwidth requirements.
Low Latency. For enterprise users, services such as VoIP, online meeting and video conferencing are bandwidth
demanding and latency sensitive as well. Consequently, how to deliver large bandwidth with low latency remains to be
solved for WTTx.
High Scalability. The WTTx network is supposed to support high scalability in order to accommodate increased user
terminals without sacrifice of the performance of existing customers. This requirement is critical especially when
considering the enterprise customers with exclusive bandwidth and high Quality of Service (QoS) requirement.

4. Enabling Technologies

4.1 Potential Architecture

The architecture for broadband access should be agnostic to the end users regardless of by means of wireless or wireline.
From the point of view of end users, the same service accommodated by FBB should be well provided by WTTx. There
are two potential solutions to deliver FBB service to wireless UE. From the point of access, CPE should be treated as a
5G UE to access wireless network.

One way is to use wireless network as a pipe to access wireline network service platform. As shown in figure 4.1-1, no
matter standalone (SA) or non-standalone (NSA) 5G network, wireless CN (i.e. EPC or 5GC) could connect to the same
wireline network service (e.g. IPTV) platform. End user is not aware they are connected by wireless or wireline. Wireless
network need to be upgraded to support services which are traditionally not applied in mobile scenario. For example,
IPTV which is normally carried by IP multicast need to be enabled in wireless network. In some case, CPE are used in
L2 bridge mode, wireless network may need to carry L2 protocol PDUs other than IP packets.

LTE
RAN EPC
WTTx

NSA NSA
NR WTTx NG-RAN IPTV/IMS

NR SA
5GC
WTTx NG-RAN

Figure 4.1-1 Wireline service over wireless architecture

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The other way is to converge wireline and wireless core network. 3GPP and BBF already started the projects to conduct
the study on convergence of wireless and wireline core network. Wireline network could connect to 5GC via 5G AGF
(Access Gateway Function) or 5G FMIF (Fixed Mobile Interworking Function). If a single Wireless-Wireline
Convergence 5G Core (WWC 5GC) is used both for wireless and wireline network, the adaption between two different
networks mentioned above is not needed any more. Both wireless and wireline terminal could use the converged protocol
to access network. For example, 3GPP already agreed to use Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) as converged
authentication protocol framework for different access network. These framework can be easily extended to cover support
non-SIM devices to perform authentication by username and passwords or certifications. After core network convergence,
service platform like IPTV or IMS can be accessed by wireless and wireline access network.

Wireline Wireline
AN CN

Hybrid
Access 5G 5G
WTTX AGF FMIF

WWC WWC
WTTx IPTV/IMS
NG-RAN 5GC

Figure 4.1-2 Wireless-wireline convergence architecture

Different operator might choose different architecture to deploy WTTx. For instance, a mobile operator might consider
the first scheme, and multi-service operators (MSO) might consider wireless-wireline convergence solution.

Most probably, operator will deploy WTTx and (e)MBB in the same network. However, there are many difference
between them in terms of user habits, business model, deployment scenarios and typical services. Thanks to 5G introduce
network slicing, operator could create two different slices for WTTx and MBB to better meet individual requirement.
For WTTx slice, operator could implement the different policy, e.g. charging broadband service bundling with IPTV and
VoIP, and introduce new mechanisms, e.g. guaranteed minimized bit rates. In addition, operator can also prioritise the
resource allocation on MBB slice over WTTx to ensure MBB users’ QoE.

4.2 5G air interface and its evolution

As described in above sections, coverage extension and user data rate enhancement are prominent challenges for
wireless broadband access. Radio technology development with the advent of 5G will be promising to cultivate the
flourishing market potential.
The coverage limitation is the bottleneck in rural as the user density is very low. There are some potential methods
which are expected to be beneficial to the coverage improvement under certain conditions as below.
• High EIRP/Transmit Power

Comparing to the base station, the uplink CPE transmit power is much lower, this normally leads to uplink coverage
limitation. The intuitive idea is to increase the CPE maximum transmit power, which needs plenty of evaluation works in

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3GPP RAN4, also regulations to be considered in different countries and areas. This will be applicable to both C-band
and mmWave, and a new UE category will be needed for CPE.
• Uplink DFTS-OFDM

With the advantage of Low PAPR, DFTS-OFDM is a good choice to improve the UL coverage. Note that uplink
coverage enhancement is quite necessary not only for UL data transmission, but also for uplink ACK for downlink
transmission.
• Massive MIMO and Beamforming

The directional property of beamforming is to concentrate the signaling power to the target user, which is more
important in 5G as slimmer beam can be realized due to more antennas placed in fixed volume, as illustrated in Figure
4.2-1.

1.8GHz
Massive MIMO

3.5GHz
Massive MIMO

Figure4.2-1 Massive MIMO

Both BS and CPE have the capability of generating beams for C-band and mmWave. Especially thanks to the larger
form factor, the CPE can have more antenna elements to form narrower beams than normal UE does. Beam alignment is
simpler and easier to keep stable for the reason of stationary CPE. Figure 4.2-2 shows the beamforming for both BS and
CPE.

Figure4.2-2 Beamforming
• Relay

CPE relay. C-band and mmWave have smaller coverage than lower frequency, e.g. 900M, 1.8G, but in typical cases
NR BS will be deployed at the same place with UMTS/LTE base stations, which may lead to the serious coverage problem.
CPE is stationary and mostly insensitive to power consumption, CPE relay is a possible way to extend the coverage. The
link between CPEs can be Uu or D2D, considering the CPE act as a BS or a UE, as illustrated in Figure 4.2-3.

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Figure 4.2-3 CPE Relay

Mobile relay. Mobile relay not only has the advantages of lower consumption, low cost and easy deployment but also
can improve the system capacity and system coverage. As shown in Figure 4.2-4, by deploying mobile relay on HST and
utilizing the mobility of mobile relay, the UE can always connect to mobile relay during the train moving without
frequently switching or cells re-selecting, effectively reducing BS side signaling overhead.

Figure 4.2-4 Mobile relay

5G is advantageous to provide high data rate in terms of the following.
• More Spectrum

C-band and mmWave have more available bandwidth, which can provide higher throughput to carry out HD videos,
e.g. 4K and IPTV, even AR/VRs. Spectrum allocation depends on the regulations of local areas, which shall be considered
by operators.
• High order modulation

Higher SINR enables WTTx network to use high order modulation which will benefit to the system capacity
improvement. DL 1024QAM has been studied in 3GPP for LTE stationary nodes, especially for WTTx CPE., It is also
necessary to 5G WTTx for C-band and mmWave. By the way, UL enhancement shall also be carefully studied if high
EIRP for CPE is adopted.
More strict performance index defined for CPE may be a good way to enable high order modulation for high frequency
band, especially for mmWave, e.g. higher ACL/ACS, lower spurious emission, and possible new Reference architecture
for CPE.

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Spectrum
Efficiency

QPSK 16QAM 64QAM 256QAM 1024QAM MCS

Figure 4.2-5 High Order Modulation

There are also other enabling solutions for mmWave proposed in 3GPP, e.g. (Non-Uniform Constellation (NUC). It is
helpful for high SINR while the increasing complexity may not be difficult for WTTx CPEs with super CPU.

Figure 4.2-6 Non-Uniform Constellation

• Single link enhancement

SU MIMO. In the case of C-band, affluent scattering and diffraction enables the MIMO capability. CPE with more
antennas & transmitters & receivers (e.g. 8T/R or 16T/R) will be promising to enhance the coverage and capacity because
of bigger volume and not considering power saving. For central CPEs with higher SINR, more layers of single CPE will
boost the peak data rate. For remote CPEs, receiver diversity will also be helpful for coverage.
But for mmWave, the ability of scattering and diffraction are weakened. LoS or Near LoS are the main scenarios. In
this case, the integration of more and more antennas may not be a good way for mmWave due to strong correlation of
different channels, and LoS MIMO is introduced to improve peak data rate.
LoS MIMO. In order to seek for high throughput, CPE deployment position may be precisely selected, e.g. on rooftop.
By tuning the antenna spacing of CPE multi-antennas with the assumption of fixed antenna spacing of BS, LoS MIMO
can provide big imaginary space to improve peak data rate and it has been proved in microwave [6]. The theory of LoS
MIMO is shown in Figure 4.2-7.

Antenna
Rank=2 spacing
adjustable

Rank=2

Figure 4.2-7 LoS MIMO

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CA. Carrier aggregation provides more bands for single CPE, which is suitable for both low frequency and high
frequency. Higher peak data rate requires the aggregation capability of more bands than normal UE, and some special
bands combinations may be defined in 3GPP especially for WTTx.

Figure 4.2-8 SU MIMO&CA

• MU MIMO

MU MIMO is one of potential methods to boost the system capacity. Especially for WTTx, MU MIMO is expected to
deliver significant gains because:
a) Channel is more stable and CPE pairing can be performed a priori since CPEs are stationary

b) The data rate for one CPE is much higher than one (e)MBB UE (e.g. 26X compared to MBB UE data rate in
LTE). The stable service demand is beneficial for the scheduling of paired CPEs

Figure4.2-9 MU MIMO

How to support more layers simultaneously is an important topic for future work. It is of interest to develop cooperative
massive MU MIMO for WTTx, i.e., multiple transmission/reception points (TRPs) cooperatively transmit a large number
of layers to multiple CPEs on overlapping time-frequency resources.
• Interference coordination & cancellation

ICIC and eICIC have been studied since LTE early releases, but interference is coordinated in cell level. Considering
the stationary CPE, if we can get precise interference relationship, e.g. interfered and interfering CPEs, a good algorithm
is supposed to minimize the interference between cells by coordination. Figure 4.2-10 shows the benefit of Coordinated
BeamForming (CBF).

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Figure 4.2-10 Beam based interference coordination between cells

For interference cancellation, LTE has defined NAICS and MUST for UEs with advanced receivers. In 5G, this feature
can also be studied, even enhanced considering the unique property of CPE, e.g. stationary and stable interference
relationship.
Terminal with advanced receivers will increase the CPE price, another way is interference cancellation by BS. By
performing Non-Liner precoding (e.g. Dirty Paper Coding), interference between layers can be eliminated, but the
complexity may increase.
• Precise link

A distinctive property of WTTx deployment is that the channels are stationary in very large time scales, such as in
terms of hours, days, months, or even years. Channels at these time scales are generally too long for conventional wireless
systems and hence rarely studied, but become very important to WTTx. Exploiting the long-term stationarity of WTTx
channels can enable non-conventional approaches to be used in WTTx. For example, bi-directional training to precisely
capture the channel conditions (including serving cell channel conditions and interfering channel conditions) can be
adopted. With precise information of the channels, advanced transmission and reception schemes can be developed and
utilized, impairments (including even minor impairments) can be estimated and compensated, and the above listed
approaches can be implemented with higher precision, and so on.
• Large-scale radio resource allocation optimization for interference management and traffic steering

Large-scale radio resource allocation includes many techniques, such as frequency reuse, cell on/off, carrier switching,
cooperation, CPE relaying, etc. It should adapt according to interference conditions and traffic conditions in a network.
On the other hand, it can also reshape interference statistics and steer traffic. Thus, the optimization of large-scale radio
resources should be considered jointly with interference conditions and traffic conditions across multiple cells, and a
cloud-RAN based architecture is suitable to support this mechanism. Compared to eMBB, the large-scale centralized
algorithm may be especially appealing to WTTx due to the relatively stable traffic load and channel/interference
conditions.

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In summary, we classify the above possible enhancements for WTTx as following:

Objectives Deployment solutions Technical Features

Super BS  DL Coverage enhancement  More Antennas/TRX  High EIRP

 DL high spectrum efficiency  Super CPU  DL 1024QAM

 May be cloudified  Beamforming, Massive

MIMO to support more
layers

 Interference cancellation
between MU layers or
cells, e.g. DPC

 Cloud-based global
coordination

 Mobile relay

CPE  UL Coverage enhancement  More  High EIRP

Antennas/Transmitters/
 UL high SINR enhancement  Higher RAN4
Receivers
performance
 UL high spectrum efficiency
 Super CPU and Stable requirements
interference
 UL 1024QAM
relationship
 Beamforming, Massive
 Adjustable antenna
MIMO to support more
spacing
layers
 High precision module
 Interference cancellation
between MU layers or
cells, e.g. NAICS/MUST

 LoS MIMO

 Precise link acquisition

and calibration

 Precise interference
relationship acquisition
(CPE level), and
coordination, e.g. CBF,
Co-JT

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4.3 Visible Light

End to end user experience improvement depends on the transmission capability of the total links between the
transmitter and receiver, including the links between users and CPEs, or between CPEs. Communication in urban indoor
and high speed train carriage requires dense transmitter deployment and high transmission speed per area, especially for
the CPE-UE and CPE-CPE links. Moreover, future service robots in those application requires high precision positioning
and navigation. One promising solution to such challenges lies in the visible light spectrum, which can potentially offer
the rate of tens or hundreds of Gbps. Another advantage of visible light communication is the limited transmission range
and thus limited interference, which can increase the density of the transmitter and the communication rate per area. Such
advantages can increase the density of deployment in indoor communication environments, such as for dense urban
applications and in high speed train carriages. The services provided range from IPTV to AR/VR. Moreover, the limit
interference range can increases the positioning precision, which paves the way for the service robots applications,
including in restaurants, the exhibitions, and in train carriages.
Typically light emitting diode (LED) is adopted for the transmitter, and a photoelectric conversion device is adopted
for the receiver. LEDs of multiple colors are multiplexed to further increase the communication rate. At the receiver, one
challenge is to design the receiver's optical antenna, to increase the light power on the photoelectric conversion device
and thus enhance the communication rate. Note that the light power variation is used for communication, instead of the
average light power. Due to the dual purpose of lighting and communication, when designing the visible light
communication system both lighting and communication constraints need to be considered. The lighting constraints
include the average power constraint for lighting intensity, the color constraint for multiple LEDs of different colors, and
the modulation depth constraint on the maximum ratio of power variation over the average power.

5. Summary
To bridge the digital divide and bring high data rate service to homes/offices, WTTx is proposed as a promising solution
to introduce the broadband access to a variety of use cases including rural, dense urban and suburban, for a series of
technical requirements, e.g., long coverage range, very high user experienced data rate and spectral efficiency. The
enabling technologies to achieve these requirements include both new network architecture and 5G air interface and their
evolution. In terms of network architecture, the wireline service over wireless architecture and wireless-wireline
convergence one can be utilized to meet the requirements of different operators and markets. To address the challenging
coverage and capacity requirements, several 5G air interface based solutions are also proposed. To be specific, massive
MIMO in the LoS environment with interference cancellation and higher order modulation is expected to achieve high
spectral efficiency, while high EIRP and advanced beamforming could reduce the impact of path loss and penetration
loss to get better coverage performance. Thanks to the large amount of bandwidth at C-band and higher frequency, the
user experienced data rate can be further improved.

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Reference
[1] Broadband commission, “The State of Broadband: Broadband catalyzing sustainable development”,
http://www.broadbandcommission.org/Documents/reports/bb-annualreport2016.pdf
[2] "IPTV Standardization on Track Say Industry Experts". ITU-T Newslog. 27 October 2006. Retrieved 17 January
2012
[3] Virtual reality, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality
[4] Augmented reality, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality
[5] 3GPP, “3GPP TR 22.891 V14.2.0 (2016-09)”,
https://portal.3gpp.org/desktopmodules/Specifications/SpecificationDetails.aspx?specificationId=2897
[6] Jonas Hansryd and Jonas Edstam, “Microwave capacity evolution”

Abbreviation
AR Augmented reality

AGF Access Gateway Function

BS Base Station

CBF Coordinated BeamForming

CPE Customer Premise Equipment

CPU Central Processing Unit

DL/UL DownLink/UpLink

EAP Extensible Authentication Protocol

eMBB enhanced Mobile Broadband

FBB Fixed broadband

FMIF Fixed Mobile Interworking Function

FTTH Fiber to the households

HBB Households with Broadband

HST High Speed Train

ITU International Telecommunications Union

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LoS line of sight

MCL Minimum Coupling Loss

MDU Multiple Dwelling Unit

MIMO Multiple-input-Multiple-output

mMTC massive Machine Type Communication

MSO multi-service operators

QoS Quality of Service

RAM Random Access Memory

ROI Return of Investment

SD Standard Definition

TCP Transmission Control Protocol

TDD Time Division Duplex

5G the Fifth-Generation mobile communications

3GPP The 3rd Generation Partnership Project

UE User Equipment

UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

URLLC Ultra Reliable and Low Latency Communication

VoIP Voice over Internet Phone

VR Virtual reality

WTTx Wireless To The x

WBB Wireless Broadband

xDSL x Digital Subscriber Line

Acknowledgement
Grateful thanks to the following contributors for their wonderful work on this white paper:

Editor: ZHOU Liping, YANG Changqing

Contributors:

Huawei: WU Yong, CHEN Weimin, WANG Jun, HUANG Yada,

XIAO Weimin, LIU Jialing, WANG Yan, JING Xiaoyun,

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JIN Weisheng, DING Yang

CMCC: Chih-Lin I, CUI Chunfeng, PAN Chengkang,

WANG Sen, WANG Ailing

China Telecom: ZHANG Meng, ZHU Jianchi

China Unicom: QIU Jiahui, LIU Qi

USTC: Gong Chen, Gao Qian, Xu Zhengyuan

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