A baseline roadmap for advanced wireless research beyond 5G

Abstract

This paper presents a baseline roadmap for the evolution of 5G new radio over the next decade. Three timescales are considered, namely short-term (2022-ish), medium-term (2025-ish), and long-term (2030-ish). The evolution of the target key performance indicators (KPIs) is first analyzed by accounting for forecasts on the emerging use cases and their requirements, together with assumptions on the pace of technology advancements. The baseline roadmap is derived next by capturing the top-10 and next the top-5 technology trends envisioned to bring significant added value at each timescale. Being intrinsically predictive, our proposed baseline roadmap cannot assert with certainty the values of the target KPIs and the shortlisting of the technology trends. It is, however, aimed at driving discussions and collecting feedback from the wireless research community for future tuning and refinement as the 5G evolution journey progresses.