Control Channel Design Trade-Offs for Ultra-Reliable and Low-Latency Communication System

Future generation of wireless networks, i.e. 5G, is envisioned to support several new use-cases demanding transmission reliability and latency that cannot be achieved by the current cellular networks such as long-term evolution (LTE). This paper looks at different design aspects of the control channel(s) to support ultra-reliable low-latency communication considering factory automation as an example scenario. In particular, we show that a fairly balanced design for both the uplink and the downlink control channels can be made given an appropriate selection of modulation, coding, diversity scheme, and time/frequency resources. By means of link-level simulations, we also show that the proposed control channel design supports a block-error rate of 10-9 under Rayleigh fading conditions at a signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio comparable to that supported by current 4G systems (e.g. LTE). Furthermore, a radio frame structure is proposed to support the user plane end-to-end latency of 1 ms.