Dual Connectivity for LTE-NR Cellular Networks

The Dual Connectivity (DC) technology has gained a lot of momentum in the LTE Release 12 as a means to enhance the per-user throughput and provide mobility robustness. Some studies in the literature have discussed a coupling between the LTE and the air interface of the upcoming Fifth Generation (5G) in a DC scenario. That integration may provide some benefits to meet the high throughput demands, reliability and availability requirements of the 5G networks. This paper presents a brief overview of the DC technology considering the inter-generations coupling and discusses some challenges involving Radio Resource Management (RRM) in such scenario.