ACCEPTED FROM OPEN CALL
Rethink Hybrid
Automatic Repeat reQuest Design for 5G:
Five Configurable Enhancements
Klaus I. Pedersen, Saeed R. Khosravirad, Gilberto Berardinelli, and Frank Frederiksen
Abstract
Current mobile communications systems have
a rather simple and single-mode HARQ function-
ality that is applied for all services. In this article
we argue for having a set of user-centric HARQ
enhancements that are configurable in coherence
with its service requirements, as a means to more
efficiently optimize the end-to-end performance.
A set of HARQ enhancements are therefore pro-
posed that can be enabled and configured per
user as needed. The presented enhancements
include more flexible HARQ timing configura-
tions, early feedback estimation for latency-critical
communication, options for adaptive redundancy
matching with enriched feedback, more efficient
handling of large transport block sizes, and opti-
mizations particularly suited for communication
with low cost and low energy-consuming devices.
Introduction
Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest (HARQ) is an old
acquaintance of cellular designs, which is known to
offer attractive benefits by allowing soft combining
of noisy received packets. Dating back to the early
work by Chase in 1985 [1], which today is com-
monly referenced as Chase combining, HARQ is
adopted in cellular standards such as High Speed
Packet Access (HSPA) and Long Term Evolution
(LTE). Similarly, the use of Incremental Redundancy
(IR) HARQ, with an additional degrees of freedom,
is also well known [2]. Today’s LTE standard relies
on HARQ with a given number of parallel stop-
and-wait (SAW) processes, assuming synchronous
operation for the uplink, and asynchronous oper-
ation for the downlink [3]. A simple Boolean feed-
back from the receiver to the transmitter, carrying
the positive Acknowledgment (ACK), or negative
Acknowledgment (NACK), is assumed. The HARQ
scheme adopted in LTE was mainly designed with
the objective of adding robustness to fast link adap-
tation imperfections (e.g. against erroneous channel
quality information), and to help improve the basic
spectral efficiency of the system.
For the fifth generation (5G) era of mobile
communications, the number of use cases and
related service requirements are even more chal-
lenging and diverse in terms of having different
optimization targets. As an example, 3GPP has
outlined the 5G reference scenarios and related
Digital Object Identifier:
10.1109/MWC.2017.1600319 Klaus I. Pedersen, Saeed R. Khosravirad, and Frank Frederiksen are with Nokia Bell Labs; Gilberto Berardinelli is with Aalborg University.
154 1536-1284/17/$25.00 © 2017 IEEE
requirements in [4]. In short, challenging require-
ments for enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB)
are defined, calling for transmission over much
larger bandwidths than previously considered for
LTE. Related to massive machine-type-communi-
cation (mMTC), requirements for supporting a
large number of connected devices are formulat-
ed. Cases with support for mission-critical and low
latency communication (LLC) are defined as well.
The different 5G use cases often come with con-
flicting optimization targets (latency, throughput,
reliability), calling for a highly agile system design
with the possibility to optimize each individual
link in coherence with its requirements (e.g., the
study in [5]). Furthermore, 5G will offer optimi-
zations and possibilities for a wide range of net-
work implementations, ranging from traditional
distributed base station implementations to state-
of-the-art advanced centralized network topolo-
gies, potentially having different functional splits
with variable latencies in the transmitter-receiv-
er chain processing. As will be discussed in this
article, all of these new 5G requirements call for
rethinking the HARQ design, essentially striving
toward a user-centric optimized design that offers
enhanced end-to-end (E2E) performance benefits
and network operator advantages. A set of new
HARQ enhancements for 5G is therefore pro-
posed in this study, some of which are motivated
by the recent published work in [6–13], as well as
other recent advances in communication theory
that are still to be materialized in standards. In
short, the proposed enhancements are motivated
by the need for greater timing flexibility, improved
LLC support, richer HARQ feedback for better
utilization of radio resources for retransmissions,
handling of large transport block sizes for eMBB
use cases, as well as optimizations tailored for low
cost mMTC use cases. We mainly focus on use
cases with intra-cell orthogonal scheduled access,
although few examples of more advanced non-or-
thogonal multiple access (NOMA) for the uplink
with non-scheduled access are also discussed. The
scope of the article is further limited to unicast
wireless links between base station(s) and devices,
and is hence not considering scenarios with direct
device-to-device (D2D), broadcast and multicast,
and wireless backhaul links (although such con-
nectivity options naturally are of relevance for 5G,
as identified in [4]).
IEEE Wireless Communications • December 2017
 Flexible Timing Configuration
Timing of the HARQ control loop is naturally of
importance, and needs to be carefully considered
for a 5G new radio design. Among others, the
following trends in the 5G research domain call
for a highly flexible and configurable timing of the
HARQ operations.
Different Transmission Time Interval (TTI)
Sizes: The current trend for 5G research is toward
having a highly flexible scheduling framework,
where users can be dynamically scheduled with
different TTI sizes [5] to best match the individual
user’s service and radio conditions.
Asymmetric Link Operation: The TTI size may
in many cases be different for a user’s uplink and
downlink transmission. From a coverage perspec-
tive, especially a macro cell-edge user may be
required to transmit with larger TTI sizes to main-
tain its uplink coverage, while still being schedu-
lable with a small TTI size in the downlink due to
the higher available transmit power at the base
station [14].
Latency in the Network Implementation: For
more advanced network implementations, the
lower physical layer processing may be physical-
ly separated from the processing of the rest of
the transmitter/receiver chain. Examples include
cases with remote radio heads (RRHs), where the
fronthaul connection between the RRH and cen-
tralized processing unit may be subject to certain
latencies (e.g., if implemented as fronthaul over
Ethernet). Other realizations of a partly or fully
centralized radio access network (RAN) imple-
mentation may also be subject to backhaul laten-
cies affecting the HARQ timing.
Decoupled Uplink and Downlink: While tradi-
tional cellular designs assume the same cell asso-
ciation for the uplink and downlink, recent studies
have indicated promising benefits from allowing
a user to be associated with different cells in
the two link directions, e.g., being connected to
a small cell in the uplink, while receiving data in
the downlink from a macro-cell [9]. Support for
decoupled uplink/downlink cell associations chal-
lenges the HARQ control loop timing, due to the
potential backhaul latency of the communication
between the involved cells.
Flexible Time Division Duplex (TDD): The use
of highly flexible TDD operation with arbitrary
per-cell switching between downlink and uplink
transmission on a fast time resolution also chal-
lenges the HARQ timing, as the relative timing of
the HARQ feedback compared to payload trans-
mission becomes variable.
Those trends essentially favor the use of asyn-
chronous HARQ operation for 5G, where the
HARQ retransmissions are flexibly scheduled.
Furthermore, the timing of the HARQ feedback
must also be configurable to match the different
use cases, thus resulting in different HARQ round
trip times (RTT). The HARQ RTT is the time it
takes from the beginning of a transmission until
the start of retransmission of the same data, or
transmission of new data can be performed for
the same SAW process. Figure 1 shows an exam-
ple for a downlink HARQ process, where the
timing elements such as the processing times,
the TTI duration, the ACK/NACK duration and
the network architecture delay influence on the
IEEE Wireless Communications • December 2017
RTT
Baseband
ACK/NACK
unit P P
Fronthaul delay
Fronthaul eNB processing
connection time
Radio P
Radio resource
unit grid ACK/NACK
Shortest UE
TTI size DL processing UL
time
Mobile
user (UE) P ACK/NACK
FIGURE 1. Timing elements in downlink HARQ RTT calculation for an exempla-
ry FDD scenario with centralized-RAN network architecture.
downlink HARQ RTT. In this particular example,
the UE is scheduled with a small TTI size in the
downlink, while the uplink ACK/NACK trans-
mission time is much longer to fulfill the users’
coverage requirements, that is, assuming the UE
is coverage challenged [6, 14]. On the contrary,
a user in better coverage conditions could be
configured to transmit the ACK/NACK in the
uplink over a shorter time, leading to a reduced
HARQ RTT.
Table 1 shows the RTT value for different
downlink data transmission TTI sizes versus dif-
ferent uplink feedback durations. The numbers
are provided for a frequency division duplex
(FDD) scenario where uplink resources are avail-
able in every slot for feedback transmission [5].
For the sake of simplicity, the processing time at
both the eNB and the UE is assumed to equal
0.1 ms.1 A minimum TTI duration of 0.125 ms is
set. The feedback transmission time varies from
0.0625 ms for UEs with very good coverage up
to 1 ms for extreme coverage-challenged UEs
[14]. It is shown in Table 1 that the HARQ RTT
can be as short as 0.5 ms by transmitting with
a short TTI size of 0.125 ms. The former is sig-
nificantly shorter than the 8 ms HARQ RTT for
the LTE FDD scenario. Table 1 also shows the
minimum number of parallel SAW processes cor-
responding to each RTT to avoid HARQ stall-
ing. Naturally, the number of SAW processes
must follow the number of consecutive downlink
transmissions that can be performed during the
RTT duration, e.g., with a RTT of 1.5 ms while
transmitting with a TTI size of 0.25 ms it is nec-
essary to have at least six parallel SAW process-
es. However, the ACK/NACK duration in the
uplink can be a restricting factor on the number
of active SAW processes. Using the example in
Table 1 with an ACK/NACK duration of 1 ms,
the number of active SAW processes is reduced
to only two. This will, however, significantly
reduce the channel utilization efficiency. Bun-
dling the feedback for multiple HARQ SAW pro-
cesses is therefore always recommended when
the HARQ feedback transmission time is larger
than the used TTI size [6]. 1 The processing time may
Finally, it should be noted that the results in practice also vary depend-
ing on the payload size,
in Table 1 are for the case with zero fronthaul i.e. allowing even shorter
latency. For cases with non-zero fronthaul processing times for small
latency (as illustrated in Fig. 1), the number of transport block sizes.
155
 # of SAW # of SAW TTI size used for DL data transmission [ms]
RTT [ms] regular bundled
feedback feedback 0.125 0.25
0.0625 0.5 4 4 0.625 3 3
0.125 0.5 4 4 0.625 3 3
ACK/NACK Tx time in the UL
0.25 0.625 3 5 0.75 3 3
[ms]
0.5 0.875 2 7 1 2 4 1.25
1 1.375 2 11 1.5 2 6
TABLE 1. Timing attributes related to downlink HARQ for a flexible timing approach with zero fronthaul latency.
required SAW processes increases even further.
Similarly, the use of multi-stream MIMO also
calls for a proportional increase in the number of
SAW processes.
Early Feedback for LLC
The processing time at the UE could become a
significant bottleneck for achieving the challeng-
ing LLC targets set for 5G. In current LTE receiv-
ers, it is estimated that around 60 percent of the
processing time is spent for turbo decoding, while
the remaining time is spent for OFDM processing,
equalization, demodulation, estimation of soft val-
ues for channel decoding, and so on. Predicting
whether the decoding will be successful prior to
the decoding itself, would enable the UE to antic-
ipate its feedback transmission while running the
full decoding operation in parallel. This will result
in reduced HARQ RTT. The prediction can be
performed upon reception of the TTI, or even
a portion of the TTI, for example, only a limited
number of OFDM symbols.
The decoder outcome can be predicted from
the log-likelihood ratios (LLR) of its input bits,
which are obtained from the estimation of soft
values during the demodulation of the equal-
ized data symbols. The proposal in [7] is based
on estimating the uncoded bit error rate (BER)
from such likelihood ratios, and mapping such
estimate to reference coded BER curves of a spe-
cific code. Though the performance is evaluated
for turbo codes, the principle can be generalized
to other coding solutions. Simulation results show
the probability of obtaining a correct prediction
in more than 90 percent of the considered cases.
However, the average rate of erroneous estimates
is not negligible. False positives occur when an
early ACK is generated for a codeblock that is not
going to be correctly decoded, while false neg-
atives occur when an early NACK is generated
for a successfully decoded codeblock. False pos-
itives could result in higher layer retransmissions.
This leads to a latency increase. Conversely, false
negatives may cause unnecessary retransmissions,
which affect the throughput but have a limited
impact on the latency. False positives are consid-
ered more critical for LLC cases. The solution in
[7] shows that their occurrence can be minimized
at the expense of an eventual higher rate of false
negatives.
It is worth mentioning that the use of an early
feedback can also be beneficial for spectral effi-
ciency improvement. The HARQ setting for the
block error rate target at first transmission (BLER1)
156
0.5 1 2
0.875 2 2 1.375 2 2 2.375 2 2
0.875 2 2 1.375 2 2 2.375 2 2
1 2 2 1.5 2 2 2.5 2 2
3 3 1.75 2 2 2.75 2 2
1.75 2 4 2.25 3 3 3.25 2 2
as well as the maximum number of transmissions
Kmax naturally affect the performance. A con-
figuration with BLER1 = 1 percent and Kmax =
2 leads to the selection of a low-order modula-
tion and coding scheme and low average latency,
while a configuration with BLER1 = 30 percent
and Kmax = 8 leads to more aggressive rates at
the expense of higher average latency. Using an
early feedback facilitates using aggressive rate
configurations without compromising the latency.
For instance, it is estimated in [7] that the same
(or lower) average latency can be achieved with
BLER1 = 10 percent and Kmax = 4 with early feed-
back, and configuration with BLER1 = 1 percent
and Kmax = 2 with regular feedback. Of the two
configurations, the former benefits from higher
spectral efficiency.
Figure 2 shows the probability of having
a larger HARQ latency than the value on the
x-axis, assuming different feedback types. The
feedback transmission time is set to 0.0625 ms
(i.e., corresponding to a UE in good coverage
conditions). A downlink TTI duration of 0.125
ms is considered, as well as a (BLER1 = 10 per-
cent, Kmax = 4) configuration, with 0.7 combin-
ing efficiency. The processing time at the base
station and terminal is set to 0.125 ms. A false
negative (FN) rate of 2 percent and 10 percent
is assumed. A FN rate of 10 percent is a rath-
er pessimistic case, while the 2 percent case is
compliant to the initial findings in [7]. The pres-
ence of FNs increases the probability of a first
retransmission, but achieves improvements of
the tail of latency distribution. For instance, at
10 –5 probability, latency of the early feedback
with 2 percent FN rate is still lower than the one
for regular feedback. Improving the reliability of
the decoder prediction by further minimizing the
probability of such wrong estimates (including
false positives) is a valid research direction for an
enhanced HARQ concept.
Adaptive-Length Redundancy Matching with
Enriched Feedback
The feedback message for the HARQ process
is traditionally a simple Boolean type value that
conveys ACK or NACK, in order to minimize the
feedback overhead. This is inefficient compared
to the case where more accurate decoder state
information (DSI) is available at the transmitter
node. The DSI conveys information on “how
close” the receiver was at being able to correctly
decode a failed HARQ transmission. In the pres-
ence of DSI at the transmitter, an optimal decision
IEEE Wireless Communications • December 2017
on the format of the retransmission can be made
0
to reduce the amount of resources used for the 10
HARQ retransmission. This is beneficial as the ~3
dB HARQ soft combining gain of two transmis- Regular FB
−1
sions with the same attributes is not always need- 10 Early FB, no FNs
Early FB, FN 2%
ed [1, 12]. Based on the earlier findings in [2],
Early FB, FN 10%
DSI-rich HARQ feedback allows more accurate 10
−2
redundancy version matching of the retransmis-

Prob (Latency > X)

sion.
−3
For the log maximum a-posteriori (LogMAP) 10
decoder, the output LLRs can be used as an esti-
mate of the DSI. The normalized accumulated −4
mutual information (NACMI) [13] can be collect- 10
ed, regardless of the channel type and attributes
of the initial transmission, and reported back to 10
−5
the transmitter. The NACMI metric can be calcu-
lated per HARQ process or per decoding oper-
−6
ation. The set of possible feedback messages is 10
0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2 2.2 2.4 2.5
bound directly by the available resources (number
X [ms]
of bits) in the feedback message. As an example,
two bits feedback can convey four different mes-
sages, where one message is reserved for ACK FIGURE 2. HARQ latency for UEs at different coverage conditions for regular
and the remaining three will be utilized to report and early feedback (FB).
different quantization levels of the NACMI metric
(a.k.a. multi-state NACK).
The benefits of the richer HARQ feedback 1
have been evaluated by means of extensive 0.9
system-level simulations. The simulation setup
assumes a full buffer traffic model in a macro-cell 0.8
scenario with an average of 10 users per cell, in
Cummulative distribution

line with the 3GPP simulation assumptions [4]. A
20 MHz carrier bandwidth at 2 GHz with an LTE-
like physical layer numerology is assumed. Fig. 3
shows the cumulative distribution of the relative
size for the first retransmission compared to the
initial transmission size. The quantization options
labelled “floor” and “ceil” choose a value that
is the closest smaller value, or the closest larger
value, to the calculated NACMI at the decoder,
respectively. The results are generated for BLER1
= 10 percent and BLER2 = 0.1 percent. For the
case of ideal feedback (i.e., no quantization of
the NACMI), the savings in the required radio
resources for the HARQ retransmissions are up
to 90 percent in ~70 percent of the failed initial
transmission samples when compared to fixed
size HARQ operation. It is shown that quantizing
the feedback message to 2–3 bits for reporting
the NACMI can potentially save up to 90 percent
of the resources used for the first retransmission
for 35–75 percent of the cases, depending on the
quantization method. The reduced retransmission
resource size in this case enhances the overall
downlink cell throughput by ~8 percent at the
expense of the higher multi-bit HARQ feedback
overhead in the uplink. Further improvements of
the link adaptation and coding methods as well
as the joint coding/decoding of multi-message
HARQ solutions [8] to accommodate adap-
tive-length redundancy matching HARQ are other
research topics that should be considered for the
5G era.
Enhancements for
Large Transport Block Size
The larger transmission bandwidth for 5G
naturally provides larger data rates, but also
challenges for the HARQ design. The carrier
bandwidth for 5G below 6 GHz is expected to
0.7
0.6
0.5 Fixed size
0.4 Ideal feedback
3-bit floor
0.3 3-bit ceil
2-bit floor
0.2 2-bit ceil
0.1
0
10 -2 10 -1 10 0
First retransmission size ratio
FIGURE 3. The ratio of the first retransmission relative to the initial transmission
size.
be up to 100 MHz [5], while it may reach val-
ues of GHz for millimeter wave bands. Hence,
scheduling a user over the full transmission
bandwidth results in a very large transport block
(TB) size (TBS). As in LTE, a TB, if larger than a
certain number of information bits (e.g., 6144
bits), gets segmented into several code blocks
(CBs) so that each CB size (CBS) is smaller or
equal to that limit [15, Sec. 5]. On the receiv-
er side, each CB will be decoded separately,
and a traditional single-bit ACK is sent only if all
the CBs in the TB are decoded correctly; oth-
erwise, the feedback is a NACK. As a result, a
single failed CB will mean that the TB is marked
as erroneous even though it would suffice to
retransmit the failed CB only. For a failed large
TB transmission and a subsequent NACK, the
following two extreme scenarios can be con-
sidered:
• One or a few CBs fail in the decoding process.
The most attractive information for the trans-
mitter in this scenario is to know which CBs
have failed and only perform a retransmission
for the failed CBs.

IEEE Wireless Communications • December 2017 157


10 0
Average first retransmission size ratio Single-bit ACK/NACK
Reporting
TB with 30 CB
one failed
TB with 40 CB
TB with 50 CB
CB index
10 -1
Reporting
two failed
CB indexes
10 -2
6 8 10 12
Total number of bits for feedback
14 16
FIGURE 4. Average relative retransmission size using a multi-bit feedback with
respect to the single-bit ACK/NACK feedback.
• All (or a majority) of the CBs in the TB fail. For
a limited number of feedback bits (less than the
number of CBs) the most useful information for
the transmitter node over the feedback channel
is the DSI of the TB, as described in the previ-
ous section.
For simplicity reasons, let us assume that the
decoding of each CB in the TB is successful
with probability 1 – r (and unsuccessful with
probability r) according to a Bernoulli random
process. For a TB segmented into 50 CBs, and a
target BLER1 of 10 percent, simple combinatorial
calculation tells us that approximately 95 percent
of NACKs will be a result of only one failed CB,
while 4 percent of the NACKs will be a result
of two failed CBs. In order to report indexes of
one or two failed CBs out of 50 CBs, 6 or 11 bits
are required, respectively. The feedback design
could include a N-bit header message, identi-
fying the type of information that the feedback
conveys. As an example, an N = 2 bits header
could point to four different feedback messages,
as follows:
11. ACK – in the case of decoding success for the
TB.
01. NACK (followed by one CB index) – in case
only one CB fails in decoding.
10. NACK (followed by two CB indexes) – in case
only two CBs fail in decoding.
00. NACK (followed by DSI) – in case there are
more than two failed CBs.
With this setup for the multi-bit feedback of 8
or 13 bits, the resources used for retransmis-
sions can be reduced by as much as ~93 percent
and ~97 percent, respectively. Fig. 4 shows the
average relative retransmission resource savings
by using a similar setup for different TBSs with
respect to total feedback size. Notice that the
model used for this numerical analysis is a simpli-
fied i.i.d. block-fading channel model with each
CB spanning over one fading block. Further-
more, the results in Fig. 4 assume that retrans-
mission of a failed CB utilizes the same amount
of resources as in the initial transmission, thus
combined with the adaptive-length redundan-
cy matching techniques described in the previ-
ous section, it will offer further opportunities for
improving the performance.
158
The flexibility of resource allocation for HARQ
feedback can be further increased by dynamically
varying the size of the HARQ feedback message.
For example, in case the first feedback from the
UE calls for retransmission of only one CB, the
size of the feedback for the HARQ retransmission
can be reduced to one bit (ACK/NACK). This will
result in saving uplink radio resources. On the
other hand, more radio resources can be reserved
in case the first feedback has triggered retransmis-
sion of the whole TB. The latter will help the base
station gain more knowledge about the decod-
er status of a fully-retransmitted TB in order to
set up the potential second retransmission with
improved resource efficiency.
Low Cost and Low Energy mMTC
Optimizations for low cost, and low ener-
gy mMTC devices is one of the important 5G
requirements [4], e.g., for enabling efficient com-
munication for sensors that require transmission
of small to medium size data amounts at a moder-
ate rate. The low cost, low energy mMTC devices
are anticipated to be realized with narrowband
transceivers (say from few hundreds of kHz to
few MHz), likely operated as half-duplex devices.
The half-duplex transmit/receive pattern may be
statically or semi-statically configured, and hence
needs to be taken into account in the HARQ con-
trol loop timing. In order to reduce the modem
cost, it is furthermore desirable to minimize the
HARQ memory requirements. This could be
achieved by allowing only one, or a few, HARQ
SAW processes. In the interest of device power
consumption, synchronous HARQ operation may
be preferred such that the device does not have
to constantly monitor for HARQ retransmissions,
but instead knows at exactly which point in time
the retransmission appears. The price for having
only a single, or few, synchronous HARQ SAW
processes is lower supported data rates, poten-
tially larger HARQ RTTs, and reduced scheduling
flexibility, which are considered acceptable com-
promises for the low cost mMTC use case.
As sporadic uplink small-packet transmissions
may be a typical use case for mMTC, traditional
intra-cell orthogonal scheduled access may like-
ly not be the best solution. Therefore, NOMA
schemes with non-scheduled access (a.k.a. as
grant-free or contention-based) are currently in
focus for uplink mMTC, potentially utilizing sparse
code multiple access (SCMA) solutions with
advanced base station multi-user detection [11].
The use of such non-scheduled access schemes
calls for rethinking the HARQ solution, especially
as the receiver sometimes may fail to even identi-
fy some of the transmissions. Hence, for such use
cases, further research is recommended.
Concluding Remarks
Table 2 summarizes the proposed five configurable
HARQ enhancements for the 5G-era. For each
category of enhancement, the related motivation
and addressed challenges are itemized, followed
by the suggested solutions. Given the necessity
of supporting diverse services and network imple-
mentations, a flexible HARQ timing control loop is
required. The envisioned 5G ultra-low latency appli-
cations may require the use of an early feedback to
be transmitted prior to finalizing the decoding. Fur-
IEEE Wireless Communications • December 2017
 Category Motivation and challenges Solution components

• Dynamic TTI size operation

• Asymmetric link operation • Asynchronous HARQ for both link directions.
• Network implementations with different fronthaul/ • Per-link configuration of the relative timing of HARQ feedback, as well as its duration.
Flexible timing
backhaul latencies • Per-link configuration of number of SAW processes.
• Flexible support for decoupled downlink / uplink cell • Allow UE categories with tight versus more relaxed processing requirements.
associations

Low latency • Early HARQ feedback to reduce the HARQ round trip • Early decoder prediction even before having received the complete transport block.
communication (LLC) time (RTT) • Prediction based on log-likelihood ratios (LLR).

• Multi-bit feedback information on “how close” the receiver was at being able to correctly
decode a failed HARQ transmission.
• Optimize resource usage for HARQ retransmissions.
Variable block length • Expressing the amount of extra information that is needed for the successive HARQ
• Benefit from richer HARQ feedback as compared to
HARQ retransmission.
traditional Boolean feedback.
• Multi-bit feedback based on quantized version of the normalized accumulated mutual
information (NACMI).

• Transport block size transmitted over a bandwidth of

100 MHz, or more, becomes extremely large.
Large transport block • Requires special attention for transport block
size handling transmission, HARQ memory, and feedback.
• Avoid retransmitting the correctly decoded segments
of a transport block.
• Transport block size transmission with frequency-selective modulation and/or coding
rate to better match the radio environment.
• Efficient design of code block structure for large transport block sizes.
• Compressed multi-bit feedback expressing the mutual information per code-block.

• Support for low cost and low energy MTC devices with
• Only few downlink HARQ SAW processes per device.
minimum memory.
• Synchronous HARQ to lower the energy consumption.
Low cost MTC • Use cases with non-scheduled uplink access, NOMA,
• Further research on HARQ schemes for non-scheduled access with NOMA and/or
SCMA is of relevance.
SCMA is recommended.
• Half-duplex devices.
TABLE 2. Summary of proposed HARQ enhancements for the 5G-era.

ther, the concept of feedback is expected to take a
leap forward from its Boolean nature and provide
further information for optimizing the retransmis-
sions. Transmission in very large bandwidth calls
for the use of efficiently designed and acknowl-
edged multiple code blocks per transmission time
interval. Finally, it is advisable to have small-size
synchronous HARQ for low energy mMTC devices
with few SAW processes. It is proposed that the
network is in charge of enabling (i.e., configuring)
the supported HARQ enhancements whenever
needed, for example, depending on the carried
service. This is essentially allowing a user-centric
HARQ configuration in coherence with its service
requirements as a means to optimize the end-to-
end performance.
In addition to the HARQ enhancements iden-
tified in this study, there are further opportuni-
ties for improvements to be explored in future
research. These include, but are not limited to,
enhancements that are optimized for new forward
error correction schemes such as polar codes and
low density parity codes (LDPC), HARQ schemes
tailored for NOMA and SCMA use cases, as well
as custom designed HARQ schemes for connec-
tivity use cases such as D2D and multi-hop wire-
less backhaul links.
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Biographies
Klaus I. Pedersen (klaus.pedersen@nokia-bell-labs.com) received
the M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering and the Ph.D. degree
from Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark, in 1996 and 2000,
respectively. He is currently leading the Nokia Bell Labs research
team in Aalborg, and he is a part-time professor at Aalborg
University in the Wireless Communications Network (WCN)

IEEE Wireless Communications • December 2017 159

 section. He is the author/co-author of approximately 160
peer-reviewed publications on a wide range of topics, as well
as an inventor on several patents. His current work is related to
5G air interface design, including radio resource management
aspects, and the continued Long Term Evolution (LTE) and its
future development, with special emphasis on mechanisms that
offer improved end-to-end performance delivery. He is currently
part of the EU funded research project FANTASTIC-5G that
focuses on research toward a new multi-service capable 5G air
interface for below 6 GHz operation.
Saeed R. Khosravirad (saeed.khosravirad@nokia-bell-labs.com)
received his B.Sc. degree in electrical and computer engineering
from the University of Tehran, Iran, and his M.Sc. degree in elec-
trical engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Iran, in
2007 and 2009 respectively. He also received his Ph.D. degree in
telecommunications in 2015 from McGill University, Canada. He
is currently with Nokia Bell Labs as a senior research engineer. His
research fields of interest include information theory and wireless
telecommunication, where lately his work has focused on radio
access network related topics, including cellular network model-
ing and radio resource management for 5G technology.
160
G ilberto B erardinelli (gb@es.aau.dk) received his first and
second level degrees in telecommunication engineering,
cum laude, from the University of L’Aquila, Italy, in 2003
and 2005, respectively, and his Ph.D. degree from Aalborg
University, Denmark, in 2010. He is currently an associate
professor in the Wireless Communication Networks (WCN)
section of Aalborg University, also working in tight cooper-
ation with Nokia Bell Labs. His research interests are mostly
focused on physical layer and radio resource management
design for 5G systems.
F rank F rederiksen (frank.frederiksen@nokia-bell-labs.com)
received the M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from Aal-
borg University in 1994. He is currently working at Nokia Bell
Labs, Aalborg, Denmark, as a wireless networks specialist.
During his employment, he has been working on concept cre-
ation and research within various radio access technologies,
ranging from HSPA, LTE, LTE-A and 5G. His main focus has
been on the physical layer and lower medium access control
operation. Currently, he is working on MulteFire innovations
and the related standardization. He is the author or co-author
of several patents.
IEEE Wireless Communications • December 2017