Quality of service provision and capacity expansion through extended-DSA for 5G

5G systems are expected to advance on a number of aspects compared with current systems, for example, providing a 1000 times higher capacity, a much lower latency and improved quality of user experience. This paper presents the vision and approach followed by the H2020 project SPEED-5G. The approach is based on densification of small cells, exploitation of Multi-RAT, development of new resource management techniques and a more efficient use of spectrum. A novel 5G system architecture is proposed based on the Network Slicing paradigm, which enables a highly flexible, scalable and backwards compatible architecture. A core aspect is the definition of a new MAC layer that facilitates Multi-RAT access and allows prioritising and allocating traffic across heterogeneous access technologies. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.