These are the most relevant features of 5G radio access:

•Spectrum flexibility:

oSpacing between subcarriers:

▪Below the 6GHz band: 15 kHz, 30 kHz and 60 kHz.

▪Above the 6GHz band: 60 kHz, 120 kHz and 240 kHz.

oMinimum and maximum bandwidth:

▪Below the 6GHz band: 5 MHz /100 MHz

▪Above the 6GHz band: 50 MHz / 400 MHz

•Carrier aggregation: up to 16 carriers

•Waveform:

oDL waveform: OFDM. OFDM with cyclic prefix (CP-OFDM).

oUL waveform: OFDM or SC-FDMA

▪OFDM focused on high throughput scenarios. OFDM with cyclic prefix (CP-OFDM), or OFDM with preprocessing (DFT-S-OFDM).

▪SC-FDMA focused for power-limited scenarios.

•Multiple Access: Orthogonal Multiple Access or Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA). Pair transmission:

oPaired, with FDD.

oImpaired, with TDD.

•Massive MIMO:

o8 antenna ports for SU-MIMO

o16 antenna ports for MU-MIMO

•Channel coding schemes:

oLDPC coding (Data)

oPolar coding (Control)

•Modulations:

oCP-OFDM (UL/DL): QPSK, 16QAM, 64QAM, 256QAM

oDFT-S-DFDM (UL): π/2-BPSK, QAM, 64QAM, 256QAM

•Possibility of using multiple directing beams of radiation: beamforming, when millimeter wave bands are used to compensate for the greater propagation loss in these bands.