With the rapid increase in the amount of data communication in 5G networks, there is a strong demand to reduce the power of the entire network, so the use of highly power-efficient millimeter-wave (mm-wave) networks is being considered. However, while mm-wave communication has high power efficiency, it has strong straightness, so it is difficult to secure stable communication in an environment with blocking. Especially when considering use cases such as autonomous driving, continuous communication is required when transmitting streaming data such as moving images taken by vehicles, it is necessary to compensate the blocking problem. For this reason, the authors examined an optimum radio access technology (RAT) selection scheme which selects mm-wave communication when mm-wave can be used and select wide-area macro-communication when mm-wave may be blocked. In addition, the authors implemented the scheme on a prototype device and conducted field tests and confirmed that mm-wave communication and macro communication were switched at an appropriate timing.

In sixth-generation (6G) mobile communication system, it is expected that extreme high data rate communication with a peak data rate over 100Gbps should be provided by exploiting higher frequency bands in addition to millimeter-wave bands such as 28GHz. The higher frequency bands are assumed to be millimeter wave and terahertz wave where the extreme wider bandwidth is available compared with 5G, and hence 6G needs to promote research and development to exploit so-called terahertz wave targeting the frequency from 100GHz to 300GHz. In the terahertz wave, there are fundamental issues that rectilinearity and pathloss are higher than those in the 28GHz band. In order to solve these issues, it is very important to clarify channel characteristics of the terahertz wave and establish a channel model, to advance 6G radio access technologies suitable for the terahertz wave based on the channel model, and to develop radio-frequency device technologies for such higher frequency bands. This paper introduces a direction of studies on 6G radio access technologies to explore the higher frequency bands and technical issues on the device technologies, and then basic computer simulations in 100Gbps transmission using 100GHz band clarify a potential of extreme high data rate over 100Gbps.

In order to cope with recent growth of mobile data traffic and emerging various services, world-wide system trials for the fifth-generation (5G) mobile communication system that dramatically extends capability of the fourth-generation mobile communication system are being performed to launch its commercial service in 2020. In addition, research and development of new radio access technologies for 5G evolution and beyond 5G systems are beginning to be made all over the world. This paper introduces our recent activities on 5G transmission experiments that aim to validate Massive MIMO technologies using higher frequency bands such as SHF/EHF bands, that is, 5G experimental trials. Recent results of 5G system trials to create new services and applications in 5G era in cooperation with partners in vertical industries are also introduced.

We propose a neurodynamical approach to a large-scale optimization problem in Cognitive Wireless Clouds, in which a huge number of mobile terminals with multiple different air interfaces autonomously utilize the most appropriate infrastructure wireless networks, by sensing available wireless networks, selecting the most appropriate one, and reconfiguring themselves with seamless handover to the target networks. To deal with such a cognitive radio network, game theory has been applied in order to analyze the stability of the dynamical systems consisting of the mobile terminals' distributed behaviors, but it is not a tool for globally optimizing the state of the network. As a natural optimization dynamical system model suitable for large-scale complex systems, we introduce the neural network dynamics which converges to an optimal state since its property is to continually decrease its energy function. In this paper, we apply such neurodynamics to the optimization problem of radio access technology selection. We compose a neural network that solves the problem, and we show that it is possible to improve total average throughput simply by using distributed and autonomous neuron updates on the terminal side.

This paper presents an overview of four on-going European research projects in the field of mobile and wireless communications leading to the next generations of wireless communications. The projects started in 2004. They investigate requirements and definition of access technology, network architecture, antennas and propagation, security, services, applications and socio-economic impact.

We investigate the capacity limitations of a WDM ring fiber-radio backbone incorporating wavelength interleaving where each base station drives a sectorized antenna interface. We also investigate the issues related to the merging of such networks with standard WDM infrastructures. The investigations show that re-allocating the interleaved WDM channels to fit within a 100 GHz block enables the millimeter-wave (mm-wave) fiber-radio system with sectorized antenna interfaces to integrate easily with WDM systems. The performance of a variety of channel allocations for the merged fiber-radio network is examined and simulation studies of the transmission of multiple channels are carried out. The overall network capacity of the merged mm-wave fiber-radio network is improved with the proposed channel allocation schemes.