Achieving Variable 5G Uplink Bandwidth for IoT Applications

As video surveillance cameras and various sensors have reached near-universal adoption for IoT applications, the uplink bandwidth demands for cellular networks are diverse and growing fast. Due to the popularity of 5G devices and the increasing deployment of 5G infrastructure, 5G has become a promising technology to meet such uplink demands. However, existing 5G uplink strategies mainly consider the practical 5G coverage issues, and have not focused on meeting the heavy and variable uplink bandwidth demands in the IoT field. In this paper, through introductions on the flexible air interface configuration of 5G NR, we reveal the feasibility of achieving variable uplink bandwidth in 5G cellular networks. We then propose an uplink bandwidth adaptation approach to dynamically set the uplink to downlink time slot ratio through signaling messages for different uplink tasks. Preliminary evaluation results show that our approach can adapt well to the variable uplink throughput of a smart home application. We envision this paper as a brief primer on 5G uplink bandwidth adaptation for interested readers to develop 5G uplink strategies with high user experience.