System-level interfaces and performance evaluation methodology for 5G physical layer based on non-orthogonal waveforms

5GNOW is a European collaborative research project questioning the design targets of LTE and LTE-Advanced, in particular the obedience to strict synchronism and orthogonality. By introducing new waveforms, the project fosters a re-design of physical and partially MAC layer to support heterogeneous traffic (high rate, sporadic access, carrier aggregation). For system level performance evaluations of the non-orthogonal waveforms (together with key radio resource management algorithms) an abstract view of the physical layer with analytical models going beyond standard OFDM performance evaluation (e.g. due to additional dependencies between resource blocks) is needed. In this paper, elements of a system level simulation platform are developed, which provide necessary abstractions and sufficient accuracy to capture the essential physical layer behavior at a reasonable computational complexity.