Sistema y Gestión de Telecomunicaciones

A 5G Infrastructure for "Anything-as-a-Service"

Abstract

Soldani D and Manzalini A

In this paper, we describe our vision of the advanced 5G infrastructure, a ubiquitous mobile ultra-broadband network supporting the Future Internet (FI). It is argued that 5G should not be simply seen as an evolution of current 4G networks, but, rather a revolution in the ICT field towards the “nervous system” of the Digital Society and Digital Economy. In fact, 5G will efficiently enable new ultra reliable, dependable, secure, privacy preserving, and delay critical services to everyone and everything, such as machines, vehicles, smart things, robots, etc. Adoption of new service models, such as “Full Immersive Experience”, enriched by “Context Information”, and “Anything as a Service” will create the conditions for the socio-economic sustainability of 5G infrastructures. In particular, “Anything as a Service” is a paradigm where devices, machines, smart things or robots will become “tools” to produce and consume applications, services and data, both for business and pleasure. This will dramatically contribute to the development of the Digital Economy centered on robots working alongside humans, thus freeing up people from many cognitive tasks and creating new jobs. As of today, for 5G many challenges are still to be addressed to meet the target performance indicators, especially, in terms of latency, reliability and spectrum usage. This paper gives a comprehensive analysis of said challenges, including recommendations on target network architectures and related enabling technologies. An exploitation scenario for Europe is presented and, eventually, a survey about main RT&D and innovation activities on 5G ongoing globally is provided.