5G System Design

16Implementation of Hardware and Software Platforms

Chia‐Yu Chang^1,*, Dario Sabella², David García‐Roger³, Dieter Ferling⁴, Fredrik Tillman⁵, Gian Michele Dell'Aera⁶, Leonardo Gomes Baltar², Michael Färber², Miquel Payaró⁷, Navid Nikaein¹, Pablo Serrano⁸, Raymond Knopp¹, Sandra Roger³, Sylvie Mayrargue⁹ and Tapio Rautio¹⁰

¹ EURECOM, France

² Intel, Germany

³ Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain

⁴ Nokia, Germany

⁵ Ericsson, Sweden

⁶ Telecom Italia, Italy

⁷ CTTC/CERCA, Spain

⁸ Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain

⁹ CEA‐LETI, France

¹⁰ VTT, Finland

* Note that the authors are listed in alphabetical order in this chapter

16.1 Introduction

The exponential growth in mobile data traffic, anticipated to reach a 1000‐fold increase over the next decade, and the large diversity of applications ‐ ranging from low bit‐rate and low‐power machine‐to‐machine (M2M) applications to highly interactive and high‐resolution entertainment applications ‐ impose a number of distinct technical requirements on hardware (HW) and software (SW) platforms, where all mobile communication and related functionalities are implemented and executed. Among the most prominent requirements, the following must be highlighted: the further improvement of quality of experience (e.g., capacity, latency, resilience) and the energy efficiency, as well as the scalability, modularity, and reconfigurability when multiple radio access technologies (RATs) are considered.

In order to deal with the increasing traffic demand and, especially, ...