Abstract
Future cellular systems need to cope with a huge amount of data and diverse service requirements in a flexible, sustainable, green and efficient way with minimal signalling overhead. This calls for network densification, a short length wireless link, efficient and proactive control signalling and the ability to switch off the power consuming devices when they are not in use. In this direction, the conventional alwayson service and worst-case design approach has been identified as the main source of inefficiency, and a paradigm shift towards adaptive and on-demand systems is seen as a promising solution. However, the conventional radio access network (RAN) architecture limits the achievable gains due to the tight coupling between network and data access points, which in turn imposes strict coverage and signalling requirements irrespective of the spatio-temporal service demand, channel conditions or mobility profiles.