Future Mobile
September 7, 2018
Control-/User Plane Separation (CUPS) [1] in mobile networks refer to the complete separation between control plane functions (which take care of the user connection management, as well as defining QoS policies, performing user authentication, etc.) and user plane functions (which deal with data traffic forwarding). It was first introduced by 3GPP’s Release 14 at packet data gateway level, concerning the 4G Evolved Packet Core (mobile core for 4G networks) and […]
August 31, 2018
The radio spectrum has become an increasingly precious and rare resource and much work has been dedicated on ways to improve the capacity of mobile communication systems without actually increasing the spectrum utilized. In this sense, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) provides undoubtedly the best solution. Indeed, in MIMO systems the effective available communication resources are increased in the spatial domain, by adding extra antennas at the transmitter side and, often, at […]
August 31, 2018
Precoding, also known as digital beamforming, consists in using an antenna array to transmit one or multiple spatially directive signals simultaneously. Every antenna of the transmit array emits a different signal, designed in the digital domain according to some optimization criteria. Thus, precoding is particularly desirable for spatial multiplexing, where we want to transmit a superposition of signals, each with a separate directivity (i.e., each directed to a different receiver, […]