Quality of service provision and capacity expansion through extended-DSA for 5G

5G systems are expected to advance on a number of aspects compared with current systems, for example, providing a 1000 times higher capacity, a much lower latency and improved quality of user experience. This paper presents the vision and approach followed by the H2020 project SPEED‐5G. The approach is based on densification of small cells, exploitation of Multi‐RAT, development of new resource management techniques and a more efficient use of spectrum. A novel 5G system architecture is proposed based on the Network Slicing paradigm, which enables a highly flexible, scalable and backwards compatible architecture. A core aspect is the definition of a new MAC layer that facilitates Multi‐RAT access and allows prioritising and allocating traffic across heterogeneous access technologies. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. This article presents the vision and approach followed by the SPEED‐5G project. It is based on densification of small cells, exploitation of multi‐RAT, development of new resource management techniques and a more efficient use of spectrum. A novel 5G system architecture is proposed based on the Network Slicing paradigm. A core aspect is the definition of a new MAC layer that facilitates multi‐RAT access and allows prioritising and allocating traffic across heterogeneous access technologies and frequency bands.