5G FOR ULTRA-RELIABLE LOW-LATENCY COMMUNICATIONS
Achieving Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communications: Challenges and Envisioned
System Enhancements
Guillermo Pocovi, Hamidreza Shariatmadari, Gilberto Berardinelli, Klaus Pedersen, Jens Steiner, and Zexian Li
Abstract
URLLC have the potential to enable a new
range of applications and services: from wireless
control and automation in industrial environ-
ments to self-driving vehicles. 5G wireless systems
are faced by different challenges for supporting
URLLC. Some of the challenges, particularly in the
downlink direction, are related to the reliability
requirements for both data and control channels,
the need for accurate and flexible link adaptation,
reducing the processing time of data retransmis-
sions, and the multiplexing of URLLC with other
services. This article considers these challenges
and proposes state-of-the-art solutions covering
different aspects of the radio interface. In addi-
tion, system-level simulation results are presented,
showing how the proposed techniques can work
in harmony in order to fulfill the ambitious latency
and reliability requirements of upcoming URLLC
applications.
Introduction
The vision of the fifth generation (5G) wireless
systems is to provide connectivity for a wide
range of applications. The Third Generation Part-
nership Project (3GPP) adapts this vision for the
design of 5G New Radio (NR) by considering
three different service categories [1]: enhanced
mobile broadband (eMBB), massive machine-
type communications (mMTC), and ultra-reliable
low-latency communications (URLLC). This is well
aligned with the International Telecommunication
Union (ITU) requirements for the International
Mobile Telecommunications 2020 and beyond
(IMT-2020) [2]. eMBB targets high transmission
rates for data hungry applications; mMTC pro-
vides scalable connectivity for a large number of
devices that form the Internet of Things (IoT); and
URLLC is a communication service for delivering
packets with stringent requirements, particular-
ly on availability, latency, and reliability. URLLC
will open the doors to emerging applications and
services, such as wireless control and automation
in industrial environments, inter-vehicular com-
munications for improved safety and efficiency,
and the tactile Internet, which allows controlling
both real and virtual objects with real-time haptic
feedback [3].
The 3GPP aims at providing URLLC for small
data payloads (32–200 B) with latency of 1
Digital Object Identifier: Guillermo Pocovi, Jens Steiner, Klaus Pedersen, and Zexian Li are with Nokia Bell Labs; Hamidreza Shariatmadari is with Aalto University;
10.1109/MNET.2018.1700257 Gilberto Berardinelli and Klaus Pedersen are with Aalborg University.
8 0890-8044/18/$25.00 © 2018 IEEE
ms (measured at the layer 3/2 of the 5G radio
access network, RAN) and with an outage prob-
ability of less than 10–5 [1]. At the higher layers,
the data must be transported fast and error-free
to the recipient, with high levels of integrity,
authenticity, and confidentiality [4]. Such strin-
gent requirements make URLLC a challenging
service that entails employing advanced tech-
niques in different parts of the 5G systems. In this
article, we describe the most critical challenges
for supporting URLLC on the RAN, as well as the
envisioned solutions to address them. We focus
mainly on the downlink direction and describe
how the different radio resource management
(RRM) functionalities should work in harmony in
order to meet the ambitious URLLC requirements.
The scope of the article is further limited to 5G
NR, although some of the enhancements are also
relevant for Long Term Evolution (LTE), which is
also targeting the support of latency-critical appli-
cations in upcoming releases [5].
Radio resource management techniques and
enablers for URLLC have been analyzed previ-
ously in various studies. As a non-exhaustive list,
[6] presents mathematical tools for addressing
the resource allocation challenges of URLLC,
including a single-cell uplink case study of
basic resource management policies (increas-
ing bandwidth or transmission duration, simple
or frequency hopped retransmission); where-
as [7] presents various radio interface and net-
work architecture concepts. With respect to
these studies, we focus here extensively on
the multi-user multi-cell system-level aspects
of URLLC, including scheduling, link adapta-
tion, radio channel variability, and multi-service
support. Specifically, we propose early pre-
diction-based feedback techniques to reduce
the processing time during hybrid automatic
repeat request (HARQ) retransmissions; chan-
nel quality indicator (CQI) enhancements for
more accurate and flexible URLLC link adapta-
tion; employing diversity and multi-connectivity
schemes to improve resilience and robustness;
and applying novel scheduling policies and
service-specific enhancements for multiplex-
ing URLLC and eMBB services efficiently. The
proposed enhancements are motivated by the
recent published work in [8–12], as well as by
recent agreements in the 3GPP on URLLC [13,
14]. Advanced system-level simulation results
IEEE Network • March/April 2018

BS
Data arrival
Resource grant
Initial data transmission
ACK/NACK
ACK is not
received
Resource grant
Data retransmission
FIGURE 1. Signaling procedure for downlink schedul-
ing-based data transmissions.
are presented to illustrate the performance of
the proposed techniques in a multi-cell/multi-us-
er environment.
Design Challenges for URLLC
Traditionally, cellular systems such as LTE and its
predecessors were designed mainly to offer high
data transmission rates. Although the current LTE
systems can achieve communication with very
low error probabilities at the physical layer, such
reliability comes at the expense of large latency,
from tens to hundreds of milliseconds. Such large
latency is a consequence of the 1 ms transmis-
sion time interval (TTI) duration, large processing
delay at the transmitter and receiver sides, and
the aggressive use of retransmission mechanisms.
For instance, a first-transmission block error rate
(BLER) target of 10–1 (10 percent) is the default
setting for LTE, and allows achieving the reliabil-
ity target of 10 –5 upon, for example, 3 HARQ
retransmissions when considering the HARQ
combining gain.
A major challenge for URLLC applications
is reducing the latency to 1 ms while providing
similar levels of reliability. Figure 1 illustrates a
simplified communication model for perform-
ing downlink data transmissions when the link is
established. When data arrive at the base station
(BS) buffers, the BS first transmits the resource
grant (RG) information to the target user equip-
ment (UE), indicating the radio resources that
carry the actual data packets. The UE tries to
decode the data, and then transmits either a pos-
itive or negative acknowledgment (ACK/NACK)
in order to convey the success or failure of data
decoding. If the BS does not receive an ACK sig-
nal from the UE, the BS will perform a retrans-
mission. It is clear that shorter TTI durations and
faster processing times, compared to LTE, are
required in order to convey the necessary con-
trol and data information (shown in Fig. 1) with-
in the 1 ms URLLC latency budget. However,
shortening the TTI results in capacity loss due
to the higher relative overhead of control sig-
nals. In addition, a short TTI reduces the system
coverage, particularly in the uplink direction, as
less energy is gathered from the UEs with limited
transmission power.
Another source of imperfections is the error-
prone nature of the control and data channels.
As studied in [8], errors in decoding the control
channel can significantly jeopardize the commu-
nication reliability. For instance, if the UE cannot
IEEE Network • March/April 2018
–1
UE 10
–2
10
–3
10
N/A
–4
10
p1 = 10 –3
–5
10 p1 = 10 –2
p1 = 10 –1
–6
10 –6 –5 –4 –3 –2
10 10 10 10 10
RG
FIGURE 2. Reliability regions for downlink scheduling-based data transmissions.
decode the RG correctly, it will not attempt to
decode the allocated data transmission. In this
case, the UE will not transmit an ACK or NACK,
which might be recognized as a discontinuous
transmission (DTX) at the BS and consequent-
ly triggers the data retransmission. In addition,
there is the possibility that the BS falsely detects
the DTX as ACK, and as a consequence does
not repeat the data transmission. Another error
type is the misinterpretation of the HARQ ACK/
NACK feedback signals. For example, the BS
might decode the NACK signal wrongly as an
ACK, which again results in not performing the
data retransmission. Figure 2 illustrates the reli-
ability regions for supporting the reliability of 1 –
10–5 for the communication. We denote eRG as
the error rate of decoding the RG information,
p1 as the BLER of the initial data transmission,
and eN/A as the error rates of decoding the
NACK as an ACK and DTX as ACK. It is assumed
that there is time for one HARQ retransmis-
sion to meet the latency constraint and a resid-
ual BLER of 10 –5 upon data retransmission. If
a NACK is detected for the initial transmission,
the retransmission is performed in such a way
that the residual BLER target is achieved upon
soft combining the received information from
both the initial transmission and retransmission
rounds. In the case of detecting a DTX, the
retransmission is performed more robustly to
compensate the lack of soft information from
the initial transmission at the receiver. It is shown
that a BLER target of 10 –1 for performing the
initial transmission entails at most 10–4 of BLER
for eRG and eN/A. Such control channel reliabil-
ities are not supported by LTE and might cause a
large signaling overhead in the system. The con-
trol channel error rate constraints can be relaxed
by performing the initial data transmission using
a more conservative modulation and coding
scheme (MCS). For instance, the BLER constraint
for the control signals (i.e., eRG and eN/A) can be
reduced to 10–3 when adopting a 10–2 BLER tar-
get for the initial data transmission. Hence, some
trade-offs exist between the reliabilities of control
and data channels, which suggests that the link
9
 Objective Component Solution

Transmission time Short TTI size to ensure fast transmission of payloads. 3GPP NR supports reduced
Iinterval slot length (e.g., 0.125 ms) and further mini-slot transmission of 1–13 symbols.

UE and BS processing Reduced UE and BS processing to ensure fast creation of transport blocks for
time transmission as well as fast processing at the receiver end.
Low latency
Short HARQ round-trip time (RTT) to allow retransmissions within the latency
HARQ
budget. Early HARQ feedback and automatic HARQ retransmissions.

Prioritized scheduling of payloads with low latency constraints to minimize BS

Scheduling policy
queuing delays. Pre-emption of eMBB traffic for URLLC data packet transmissions.

Microscopic antenna Higher order SU-MIMO diversity to reduce the probability of experiencing deep
diversity fades.

Inter-cell non-coherent Data duplication of macroscopic transmission from multiple cells to the same UE
joint transmission to improve reliability. Robustness against shadow fading and cell failures.

Enhanced time diversity and frequency diversity (with frequency hopping) by

HARQ using HARQ with soft combining. Adding robustness toward potential link adaption
imperfections.

Ultra-reliability
Enhanced control channel
reliability
High reliability of downlink control carrying resource grant, as well as uplink control
carrying feedback information such as ACK/NACK and CSI. Achieved using stronger
coding, power boosting, and asymmetric signal detection techniques.

Dynamic modulation and coding selection for URLLC transmission with low initial
BLER target. Facilitated through enhanced UE CQI feedback corresponding to
Link adaptation
low (network configurable) BLER target. Joint link adaptation for control and data
channels.

Advanced UE interference mitigation receivers (e.g., MMSE-IRC or NAICS). Net-

Interference mitigation
work-based inter-cell interference coordination

Allow preemptive scheduling, where an ongoing eMBB transmission is partly

Preemptive scheduling overwritten by a short URLLC transmission to facilitate immediate scheduling of
Coexistence with such payloads without prior radio resource reservation.
other services such
as eMBB Service-specific link adaptation such that eMBB transmissions are scheduled with
Link adaptation a spectrum-efficient 10 percent BLER target, whereas URLLC users are served with
lower BLER target (< 1%).
TABLE 1. Summary of URLLC enhancements.

(CQI) reports, advanced antenna diversity, and

A significant part of the latency budget is spent by the processing time at the UE. A typical LTE receiver
spends around 60 percent of the processing time on turbo decoding, while the remaining time is spent
on other operations, such as OFDM processing, equalization, and soft demodulation.
adaptation for data channels needs to take into
account the errors of control channels.
Link adaptation also plays an important role.
In order to fulfill the reliability constraints iden-
tified in Fig. 2, it is necessary that the BS has
accurate knowledge of the experienced chan-
nel quality in the downlink direction, such that
the transmission parameters (e.g., MCS) can be
properly adjusted to achieve the required error
rate performance. However, this is a challenging
task due to the stochastic nature of the wireless
channel. For instance, the multipath propagation
typical in urban scenarios may result in large and
unpredictable variations of the received signal
power across frequency and time. In addition, the
intermittent transmission of small URLLC packets
at each BS results in rapidly varying interference
with little correlation in time and frequency, as
reported in [9]. As a result, the signal to interfer-
ence-plus-noise ratio (SINR) experienced at each
URLLC UE also changes rapidly, which calls for
employing enhanced channel quality indicator
interference mitigation techniques to deal with
this challenge.
Enabling Solutions for URLLC
It is clear that various sorts of enhancements
are required in order to fulfill the requirements
of upcoming URLLC applications. This section
presents some potential solutions, summarized in
Table 1, to address the mentioned challenges.
Short TTI Duration
The 3GPP has introduced a very flexible frame
structure for 5G NR, which offers different pos-
sibilities to shorten the TTI duration compared
to LTE [13]. For instance, the subcarrier spacing
(SCS) is configurable in order to support opera-
tion in different frequency bands. The 15 kHz SCS
in LTE corresponds to the baseline configuration,
and can scale with a factor of 2N, where N  [0,
1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. Besides, the number of orthogonal
frequency-division multiplexed (OFDM) symbols
per TTI can also vary. Following the NR terminolo-
gy, users can be scheduled on slots of 14 OFDM
symbols, and on mini-slots composed of 1–13
symbols. Short TTIs can therefore be built by
reducing the symbol duration (increasing the SCS)
and/or reducing the number of symbols per TTI.

10 IEEE Network • March/April 2018

For example, a TTI duration of 0.125 ms can be
obtained by scheduling users on a slot resolution
for the case with 120 kHz subcarrier spacing (N =
3). Another possibility, more suitable for low-fre-
quency bands, is, for example, to use 15 kHz SCS
(N = 0) and schedule users with a mini-slot of 1–3
symbols (∼71–222 ms), leaving room for process-
ing time and HARQ feedback transmissions with-
in 1 ms [9]. The mini-slot is therefore useful for
time-critical services, while other services can still
operate with longer TTI durations.
F ast HARQ Retransmissions
It has been argued that one retransmission can
be used at maximum to achieve the 1 ms laten-
cy requirement in a spectrum-efficient manner
[9]. As presented in Fig. 2, the 1 – 10–5 reliability
target can be obtained, for instance, with a 10–2
BLER target at first transmission and exploiting
HARQ combining for the retransmission in order
to achieve a 10–5 residual BLER.
A significant part of the latency budget is spent
by the processing time at the UE. A typical LTE
receiver spends around 60 percent of the process-
ing time for turbo decoding, while the remaining
time is spent on other operations, such as OFDM
processing, equalization, and soft demodulation.
The usage of low-density parity check (LDPC)
codes, as agreed in 3GPP for 5G NR eMBB ser-
vices, has the promise of reducing the processing
time. However, the effective benefits of such codes
for URLLC services are still disputed in the stan-
dardization forum. To further reduce the process-
ing time for HARQ retransmissions, it is proposed
to predict whether the decoding will be successful
or not prior to the decoding itself; this enables the
UE to anticipate its feedback transmission while
running the decoding in its pipeline. The predic-
tion can be performed upon reception of the TTI
or mini-slot, or even a portion of it, for example,
only a limited number of OFDM symbols. The pro-
posal in [10] is based on estimating the uncoded
bit error rate (BER) from the log-likelihood ratios
(LLRs) of the input bits at the decoder, and map-
ping such estimate to reference coded BER curves
of a specific code. Although the performance is
evaluated for turbo codes, the principle can be
generalized to other coding solutions. Simulation
results show the possibility of obtaining a correct
prediction in more than 90 percent of the cases.
However, the average rate of erroneous estimates
is not negligible. False positives occur when an
early ACK is generated for a transport block that is
not going to be correctly decoded, while false neg-
atives occur when an early NACK is generated for
a successfully decoded transport block. False pos-
itives could result in higher-layer retransmissions.
This leads to a latency increase. Conversely, false
negatives may cause unnecessary retransmissions,
which affect the throughput without harming the
latency and reliability. False positives are then con-
sidered more critical for URLLC cases. The solu-
tion in [10] assumes that their occurrence should
be minimized at the expense of an eventual high-
er rate of false negatives. Further improvements
of the prediction technique to boost its reliability
are currently under study. Our hypothesis is that
improved prediction techniques in combination
with sensitive tolerance of false negatives can cope
with the URLLC targets.
IEEE Network • March/April 2018
Further improvements of the prediction technique to boost its reliability are currently under study.
Our hypothesis is that improved prediction techniques in combination with a sensitive tolerance of
false negatives can cope with the URLLC targets.
Control Channel Enhancements
As mentioned earlier, the support of URLLC relies
on providing high levels of reliability for both data
and control channels. Conventionally, control
channels were designed to meet the requirements
for all the services. However, this approach might
not be feasible for 5G as it needs to accommo-
date services with a wide range of requirements.
This calls for a more flexible design for control
channels that can be configured according to
each individual service. In this respect, the fol-
lowing URLLC-specific control channel enhance-
ments are proposed.
Link Adaptation for Control Channels: In
LTE, link adaptation is mainly supported for the
data channels. Some control channels such as
the physical downlink control channel (PDCCH),
containing the RG, also support link adaptation
by adjusting the aggregation level (i.e., repetition
coding rate) in accordance with the user’s radio
conditions. The maximum supported aggrega-
tion level in LTE is 8, which provides a 1 percent
error rate of decoding the PDCCH for an SINR
of –5 dB [15]. For 5G, larger aggregation levels
(e.g., 16) or more robust coding schemes will be
required to achieve lower error rates as identified
in Fig. 2. A similar approach should be applied to
other critical control channels such as the physi-
cal uplink control channel (PUCCH) carrying the
CQI and HARQ feedback in the uplink, which are
transmitted with a fixed MCS in the current LTE.
Besides varying the coding rate, power control
techniques can also be applied in order to boost
or reduce the transmit power on a per-user basis
and achieve the required error performance [15].
Asymmetric Signal Detection for ACK/NACK
[8]: For URLLC, the reliability of detecting the
NACK signals is more important than the reli-
ability of detecting the ACK signals. Therefore,
the asymmetric signal detection can be utilized
to reduce the probability of missing the NACK
signals at the cost of increasing the wrong ACK
detection (i.e., decoding an ACK as a NACK).
Compact Downlink Control Information
(DCI): URLLC services are typically associated
with smaller packet sizes compared to eMBB.
Hence, the number of bits that are used to indi-
cate the number of physical resource blocks
(PRBs) can be reduced. For 5G NR, DCI content
is still under discussion, and two DCI sizes have
been agreed for the purpose of performance
evaluation: 20 bits and 60 bits [14]. The compact
DCI formats allow more robust transmission of
the control channel information without increas-
ing the control overhead.
Diversity and Multi -Connectivity
Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna
schemes are essential to deal with the fast fading
effects in the wireless channel, thus playing an
essential role in achieving the reliability require-
ments. As reported in [11], URLLC devices should
operate with at least 2  2 (preferably 4  4) sin-
11
 URLLC mini-slot transmissions (0.143 ms)
Incoming URLLC data are

Frequency (PRB resolution)

immediately scheduled by
overwritting part of an ongoing
eMBB transmission
Mini-slot
(0.143 ms)
URLLC
data

Transmission for eMBB UE (1 ms TTI)

Time (slot resolution) (b)
eMBB transmissions (1 ms)
(a)

FIGURE 3. Resource allocation framework for URLLC and eMBB multiplexing: a) downlink multi-service mul-
tiplexing example; b) downlink preemptive scheduling. Physical layer numerology: 15 kHz subcarrier
spacing.

5G BS signals to the UE the BLER target at which

From a cost and resource efficiency perspective, one promising setup consists of dynamically the UE should measure and report the CQI.
multiplexing the URLLC traffic with traditional eMBB traffic. However, this is a challenging task given the Third, the CQI report should effectively reduce
the link adaptation mismatches due to the rapid
very different requirements of these two service classes. and unpredictable SINR variations previously
described. One option is that the SINR-to-CQI
mapping at the UE is based on the m-worst col-
gle-user (SU) single-stream transmission schemes, lected channel quality measurements, compared
that is, maximizing the diversity order of the to LTE where the CQI is typically reported for
wireless link. Larger antenna arrays also facilitate the m-best subbands. With this approach, the
the use of advanced interference mitigation tech- CQI report implicitly accounts for the worst case
niques at both the UE and BS sides, for instance, SINR (i.e., the tail of the user channel quality
minimum mean square error with interference distribution), hence reducing the probability of
rejection combining (MMSE-IRC), network-as- experiencing a BLER larger than the required
sisted interference cancellation and suppression one. Another promising solution consists of
(NAICS) receivers, or even coordinated beam- applying low-pass filtering on the time-frequen-
forming. Furthermore, macroscopic diversity, that cy-selective SINR measurements at the UE such
is, data duplication and redundant transmission/ that historical information of the experienced
reception from multiple BSs, is also required in channel quality is implicitly included in the CQI
order to combat the slow fading effects (or shad- report. For example, the study in [9] proposes
owing) and to provide mobility robustness during that the UE measures the experienced channel
handovers. In this regard, data duplication at quality on every TTI with a certain PRB resolu-
the packet data convergence protocol (PDCP) tion (a.k.a. subband). Each measurement is fil-
layer has been agreed for NR in the 3GPP [14]. tered with a low-pass first-order infinite impulse
At the lower layers, inter-cell non-coherent joint response (IIR) filter si[n] = a * yi[n] + (1 – a) * si[n
transmission is among the candidate transmission – 1], where yi[n] is the measured channel quality
schemes, thanks to its relatively low complexity at TTI n on subband i, a is the forgetting factor
(compared to inter-cell joint coherent schemes) of the filter, and s i[n] is the smoothed channel
and robustness against user movements and tim- quality measurement of the ith subband. si[n] is
ing mismatch across cooperating cells [11]. Mac- constantly updated at the UE side and reported
roscopic diversity also provides benefits in terms periodically or aperiodically to the BS. The for-
of resilience against failures of the cellular infra- getting factor a determines how much weight
structure. is given to the latest measurement compared to
the previous ones. The study in [9] considers a
CQI Enhancements = 0.01, which provides significantly better link
The CQI report is utilized for performing the adaptation accuracy compared to LTE, where
downlink link adaptation by indicating to the channel quality measurements are obtained from
BS the highest MCS that the UE estimates it a relatively short measuring window. The benefit
can decode with a certain BLER constraint. To of this enhancement is further illustrated in the
efficiently support URLLC, the following three next section.
enhancements for the CQI measuring and
reporting procedure are proposed. First, the CQI E fficient URLLC and eMBB Multiplexing
report must be estimated at the UE targeting dif- From a cost and resource efficiency perspec-
ferent BLER targets compared to the fixed 10 tive, one promising setup consists of dynamically
percent target in LTE. This can be achieved by multiplexing the URLLC traffic with traditional
applying different threshold levels when perform- eMBB traffic. However, this is a challenging task
ing the SINR to CQI mapping. Second, the BLER given the very different requirements of these
target for downlink data transmissions should two service classes. URLLC traffic is typically
be configurable according to the TTI duration, bursty and sporadic, and must be immediately
HARQ round-trip time (RTT), and control chan- scheduled with a short TTI in order to fulfill the
nels’ reliabilities. Hence, it is proposed that the latency requirement. In contrast, eMBB traffic

12 IEEE Network • March/April 2018

would benefit from the usage of 1 ms or longer
TTIs, which leads to lower signaling overhead.
One solution is to pre-reserve radio resources
for the URLLC data transmissions. However, this
results in waste of radio resources when there is
no traffic from the URLLC services. A more effi-
cient solution is to use preemptive scheduling as
follows [12, 14]: eMBB traffic is scheduled on all
the available radio resources (assuming sufficient
offered traffic) with a long TTI, for example, 1 ms.
When URLLC data arrives at the BS, it is immedi-
ately transmitted to the corresponding UE by
overwriting part of an ongoing eMBB transmis-
sion using mini-slot transmission, as illustrated in
Figs. 3a and 3b. This has the advantage that the
URLLC payload is transmitted without waiting
for ongoing scheduled transmissions to be com-
pleted, and without the need for pre-reserving
radio resources for URLLC traffic. The price of
the preemptive scheduling technique is for the
user whose transmission is partly overwritten.
To minimize this impact, the study in [12] pro-
poses to include an indication to the victim UE
that part of its transmission has been overwrit-
ten. This enables the UE to take this effect into
account when decoding the transmission, that
is, it knows that part of the transmission is cor-
rupted. To further improve the performance, we
propose to apply smart HARQ retransmission
mechanisms, where only the overwritten part of
the initial transmission is retransmitted. The bene-
fit of this enhancement is further illustrated in the
next section.
Downlink System Performance Analysis
We present downlink performance results to
show the benefits of the proposed enhancements.
In the first set of results, we evaluate the down-
link latency and reliability performance of URLLC
traffic in a multi-user multi-cell scenario, following
the 5G NR evaluation assumptions in [14]. The
network is composed of 7 three-sector sites (21
cells) deployed with 500 m inter-site distance. At
each cell, there are on average 10 URLLC users
uniformly distributed. URLLC traffic is modeled
as small payloads of 50 B that arrive at the BS
according to a homogeneous Poisson point pro-
cess with average arrival rate . The system-level
simulations include detailed modeling of the RRM
functionalities previously described, including
packet scheduling; HARQ with a short RTT of 4
TTIs and Chase combining; link adaptation target-
ing a low BLER target of 10–2 for the initial data
transmissions; and 2  2 closed-loop single-user
MIMO with dynamic precoding to reduce the
time- and frequency-domain fast fading variations.
The varying control channel overhead is explicitly
modeled, assuming that the UEs always decode
those correctly (for effects of control channel RG
errors, see Fig. 2). The physical layer numerology
corresponds to the baseline numerology agreed
for 5G (15 kHz subcarrier spacing, PRB size of 12
subcarriers). Whenever a URLLC payload arrives
at the BS, it is immediately scheduled with a mini-
slot duration of 2 OFDM symbols (0.143 ms) if
there are sufficient radio resources at the cell. A
carrier bandwidth of 10 MHz (50 PRBs) is con-
sidered.
Figure 4 shows the complementary cumula-
tive distribution function (CCDF) of the laten-
IEEE Network • March/April 2018
0
10
Packets that go through in
–1 the initial transmission
10
–2
10
CCDF
–3 HARQ processing time
10
Packets requiring HARQ
retransmission
10
–4
With CQI filtering
Without CQI filtering
10
–5
= 500 packets/s
= 125 packets/s
–6
10
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2
URLLC latency (ms)
FIGURE 4. URLLC latency and reliability performance without eMBB traffic.
cy of each downloaded URLLC payload. Note
that given the simulation assumptions, those
are conditional distributions, assuming error-
free control channel decoding by the UEs. The
latency is measured from the moment that
the payload arrives at the BS buffers until it is
successfully received at the UE. The different
components contributing to the URLLC laten-
cy are also depicted, showing the cases where
the URLLC payloads are immediately sched-
uled and successfully received at the UE, and
cases where the initial transmission fails and
one HARQ retransmission is triggered upon
reception of a NACK at the BS. Two per-user
arrival rates of URLLC traffic are considered:
l = 125 payloads/s and l = 500 payloads/s,
which correspond to an average PRB utilization
of 1.8 and 8 percent, respectively. Furthermore,
the figure compares cases with and without the
proposed CQI enhancement, in which low-pass
filtering (a = 0.01) of the time-frequency-selec-
tive channel quality measurements is applied to
improve the link adaptation accuracy (referred
to as “CQI filtering” in Fig. 4). It is observed that
the CQI filtering enhancement can considerably
improve the latency and reliability performance.
The benefits of this technique are especially vis-
ible at high offered load, when the cell activity
is higher and more intermittent interference is
experienced in the network. For cases where
CQI filtering is applied, a first-transmission BLER
of 10 –2 or lower is generally obtained. Such
low initial-transmission BLER, together with fast
HARQ retransmissions and Chase combining,
allow the achievement of a residual BLER of
10–5 within less than 1 ms latency, hence fulfill-
ing the URLLC requirements.
In the second set of results, five additional
UEs with full buffer eMBB traffic are deployed
in each cell in order to illustrate the benefits of
the proposed URLLC and eMBB multiplexing
enhancements. To improve the eMBB spectral
efficiency, a service-specific BLER target of 10
13
 10 0 6
Partial HARQ retx.
Full HARQ retx.
–1 5
10

50%-ile eMBB user throughput (Mb/s)

10 –2 4
CCDF

10 –3 3

10 –4 2

10 –5 1
= 500 packets/s
= 125 packets/s
10 –6 0 0
0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 = 0 packet/s = 125 packets/s = 500 packets/s
URLLC latency (ms) (b)
(a)

FIGURE 5. a) URLLC latency and reliability performance with eMBB traffic; b) throughput performance of eMBB traffic with preemptive
scheduling.

URLLC users in accordance with their low latency

It is observed that the CQI filtering enhancement can considerably improve the latency and reliability and high reliability requirements (conditioned on
performance. The benefits of this technique are especially visible at high offered load, when the cell error-free control channel decoding by the UEs),
while still providing high data rates to the eMBB
activity is higher and more intermittent interference is experienced in the network. users.

Conclusions
percent is configured for eMBB UEs, and they In this article, we have presented a comprehen-
are scheduled with a TTI of 1 ms using all avail- sive analysis of system-level aspects of URLLC. It
able PRBs. The URLLC payloads are immediately is shown that fulfilling the URLLC requirements
scheduled on arrival with a mini-slot of 0.143 needs a new design of the radio interface (com-
ms, by overwriting part of the ongoing eMBB pared to LTE), as well as novel radio resource
scheduled transmissions as illustrated in Figs. 3a management concepts that exploit the high
and 3b. The CQI filtering enhancement is not degree of flexibility at the physical layer. Partic-
applied for this set of results, as the presence ularly, we have highlighted the importance of
of eMBB traffic results in stable interference using short TTI in combination with fast HARQ
conditions. Figure 5a shows the CCDF of the retransmission mechanisms for efficient sched-
URLLC latency. The performance is generally uling of the latency-critical payloads. In this
worse compared to the URLLC-only case in Fig. regard, early prediction of the HARQ feedback
4, which is a consequence of the larger inter- is suggested in order to reduce the processing
cell interference from scheduling eMBB users on time during retransmissions and fulfill the 1 ms
the same radio channel. Nevertheless, the 1 ms URLLC latency budget. In addition, the impor-
latency requirement is still fulfilled for both load tance of achieving low error probabilities for
conditions. both data and control channels has been dis-
Figure 5b presents the 50th percentile (medi- cussed, including recommendations on the fea-
an) of the eMBB users’ throughput. It compares sible error probabilities of the data channel for
the case where the full transport block is retrans- a given control channel error rate constraint.
mitted for failed eMBB transmissions to the case Based on this analysis, various enhancements
where only the damaged part of the eMBB trans- have been presented in order to fulfill the
mission that has been subject to preemption is required reliability levels. This includes CQI
retransmitted (labeled as partial HARQ retrans- enhancements for more accurate and flexible
mission). Naturally, the presence of URLLC traffic URLLC link adaptation, and exploiting spatial
degrades the eMBB performance. Such degrada- diversity and multi-connectivity to combat the
tion is alleviated by applying the partial retransmis- fast fading effects of the wireless channel, and
sion enhancement, as fewer radio resources are improve robustness and resilience. Furthermore,
utilized for HARQ retransmissions of overwritten the multiplexing of URLLC traffic with more
eMBB transmissions. The resources that are saved traditional eMBB traffic has been addressed by
by scheduling smaller retransmissions can instead introducing preemptive scheduling techniques
be used for initial transmissions to other eMBB and service-specific link adaptation policies.
UEs. The gain from using partial retransmissions is Finally, we have presented system-level per-
larger for higher offered loads of URLLC traffic, as formance results showing how the proposed
more eMBB transmissions are subject to preemp- techniques complement each other, and allow
tion. We conclude that the preemptive schedul- meeting the latency and reliability requirements
er approach fulfills the objective of serving the of upcoming URLLC applications.

14 IEEE Network • March/April 2018

 Acknowledgments
This work is partly funded by the Innovation Fund
Denmark (IFD) under File no. 7039-00009B.
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Biographies
G uillermo P ocovi (guillermo.pocovi@nokia-bell-labs.com)
received his M.Sc. degree in telecommunications engineering
from Universitat Politcnica de Catalunya in 2014, and his PhD
from Aalborg University, Denmark, in 2017. He is currently an
industrial postdoctoral researcher at Nokia Bell Labs Aalborg,
partly sponsored by the Danish Innovation Fund. His research
interests are mainly related to ultra-reliable and low-latency com-
munications for current wireless networks and upcoming 5G
New Radio.
Hamidreza Shariatmadari (hamidreza.shariatmadari@aalto.fi)
received his B.Sc degree in electrical engineering from the Uni-
versity of Tabriz in 2009, and his M.Sc degree (with distinction)
in communications engineering from Aalto University in 2013.
He is currently pursuing a doctorate degree at Aalto University
in the Department of Electrical Engineering. His current research
IEEE Network • March/April 2018
The preemptive scheduler approach fulfills the objective of serving the URLLC users in accordance with
their low latency and high reliability requirements (conditioned on error-free control channel decoding
by the UEs), while still providing high data rates to the eMBB users.
interests are tied to the development of machine-type commu-
nications. In particular, he is investigating the enabling technolo-
gies for supporting ultra-reliable low-latency communications in
fifth generation cellular systems.
G ilberto B erardinelli (gb@es.aau.dk) received his first- and
second-level degrees in telecommunication engineering, cum
laude, from the University of L’Aquila, Italy, in 2003 and 2005,
respectively, and his Ph.D. degree from Aalborg University in
2010. He is currently an associate professor at the Wireless
Communication Networks (WCN) section of Aalborg Univer-
sity, also working in tight cooperation with Nokia Bell Labs.
His research interests are mostly focused on physical layer,
medium access control, and radio resource management for
5G systems.
K laus P edersen [SM] (klaus.pedersen@nokia-bell-labs.com)
received his M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering and Ph.D.
degree from Aalborg University in 1996 and 2000, respectively.
He is currently leading the Nokia Bell Labs research team in
Aalborg, and is a part-time professor at Aalborg University in the
WCN section. He is an author/co-author of approximately 160
peer-reviewed publications on a wide range of topics, as well
as an inventor on several patents. His current work is related to
5G New Radio, including radio resource management aspects,
and the continued Long Term Evolution (LTE) and its future
development, with special emphasis on mechanisms that offer
improved end-to-end (E2E) performance delivery. He is currently
part of the EU funded research project ONE5G, which focuses
on E2E-aware optimizations and advancements for the network
edge of 5G New Radio.
J ens S teiner (jens.steiner@nokia-bell-labs.com) received his
M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from Aalborg University
in 1996, with a specialty in software engineering. Since 1996
he has worked for different companies, mainly in the telecom-
munications sector. Since 2005 he has been working at Nokia,
Aalborg, first as an external consultant and subsequently as a
permanent member of staff. At Nokia Bell Labs, he is current-
ly involved in 5G radio access network system-level simula-
tor research and development. He also contributes to radio
research beyond software development. He is part of the EU
funded research project ONE5G, which focuses on E2E-aware
optimizations and advancements for the network edge of 5G
New Radio.
Zexian Li (zexian.li@nokia-bell-labs.com) is a senior specialist at
Nokia Bell Labs, Finland. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees
from Harbin Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. degree from
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, P. R. China.
From 2000 to 2005, he was a senior research scientist at the
Centre for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu, Fin-
land, involved in various national and EU projects including
TEKES and EU WINNER. Since 2005, he has been with Nokia,
Finland, focused on research and standardization activities on
broadband wireless communication systems, most recently on
5G and LTE-A Pro. He led the horizontal topic on direct D2D
within the EU FP7 METIS project and is involved in the ongoing
5GCAR project. Currently his research interests include 5G,
MTC/IoT for vertical applications, and future wireless technolo-
gies for improving human life.
15