Of the requirements outlined in Section I-B, certainly the one
that gets the most attention is the need for radically higher data
rates across the board. Our view is that the required 1000× will,
for the most part, be achieved through combined gains in three
categories:
a) Extreme densification and offloading to improve the area
spectral efficiency. Put differently, more active nodes per
unit area and Hz.
b) Increased bandwidth, primarily by moving toward and
into mmWave spectrum but also by making better use
of WiFi’s unlicensed spectrum in the 5-GHz band. Altogether,
more Hz.
c) Increased spectral efficiency, primarily through advances
in MIMO, to support more bits/s/Hz per node.