A Leaner Carrier for the New 5G Air Interface

This paper studies the physical layer performance of a lean carrier with reduced reference symbols and reduced control channel overhead as a possible candidate for a new 5G air interface. Specifically, we will show that, with minor modifications and optimizations, competitive link level performance can be achieved even in extreme use case scenarios using synchronization and channel estimation algorithms already employed in LTE-A. Further, we propose a set of enhancements to the broadcast channel and to the common search space configurations to fully dispense with cell specific reference symbols and legacy control channels.