Transparent Tx and Rx Waveform Processing for 5G New Radio Mobile Communications

Several different waveform processing techniques have been studied and proposed for the 5G new radio (NR) physical layer, to support new mixed numerology and asynchronous services. The evaluation and comparison of these different techniques is commonly based on matched waveform processing in the transmitter and receiver units. In this article, it is shown that different techniques can be flexibly mixed, making it possible to separately optimize complexity-performance trade-offs for transmitter and receiver implementations. Mixing different waveform processing techniques is possible by setting adequate requirements for transmitter and receiver baseband processing allowing transparent design. We provide the basic framework of how transmitter and receiver units can be independently applied and evaluated in the context of transparent design and an extensive set of examples of the achievable radio link performance with unmatched transmitter and receiver waveform processing. The discussed approach and solutions simplify standardization, improve transparent transmitter and receiver coexistence, and enable a future-proof evolution path for performance improvements in 5G NR physical layer hardware and algorithm design.