The emergence of small cells is one of the biggest changes in mobile network architecture and careful studies are needed to understand the following questions, among others:

 

• How small can the small cell range be in practice when the carrier frequencies are approaching the THz range with realistic transceivers?

• How should a network based on small cells be managed efficiently to keep the signalling load to a minimum? How should macro cells and small cells be organized in HetNet scenarios?

• How can wireless backhauling be solved? How will the somewhat disorganized building of small cell-based systems impact physical layer design and interference management?

• How can the user signals be acquired and tracked with extremely narrow antenna beams operating at mmWaves?

• How are the new radio access schemes designed so that overall system is functional and realizable?

• How are the transceiver algorithms supporting the distributed realization of the overall RAN optimization and network operation?