Guard band reduction for 5G and beyond multiple numerologies

The existence of inter-numerology interference (INI) is a major drawback for the flexible multi-numerology frame structure proposed for the upcoming fifth generation New Radio (5G-NR). Insertion of a guard band (GB) between adjacent numerologies has been widely used in the literature as one of the effective ways to reduce the INI. However, the conventional way of implementing GBs is inefficient in terms of spectrum usage. In this letter, we exploit the inherent INI characteristics of the scalable multi-numerology structure to propose a more spectrally efficient way of implementing GBs. It is shown through simulations that the proposed GB insertion technique enhances the GB utilization up to 50% while achieving the same bit error rate performance as the conventionally implemented GB.