# Key Technologies in the Context of Future Networks: Operational and Management Requirements
## 1 Introduction  
The emergence of a new business model and services (e-solutions, e-health, e-commerce, Voz IP, streaming, among others) and the exponential growth in the information circulating on the Internet has brought unexpected challenges to the IT industry. The development of new infrastructures, known as Future Networks, is focused on ensuring robustness, security, scalability and the fast deployment of applications through the customization of network behavior. According to the Future Internet 2020 Report of the European Commission, the development of a new generation of networks takes an average of 10 years, this means that the concept of Future Networks is coming soon. Future Networks must provide a flexible, reliable, secure, smart and high-performance environment to connect the digital society, while leveraging the competitiveness, faster innovation and standardization of new technologies. This network must embrace not only current services but also any kind of elements (Internet of Things--IoT) [1]. These kind of networks will generate a significant impact not only on the societal but also on the operational field. On one hand, Future Networks must cover the necessities of smart cities, entertainment, public security, etc., providing a wide range of network services and applications [2]. Users will expectenhanced Quality of Experience (QoE) with minimal disruptions of the services, regardless of their location, the kind of device, or when the service is required. On the other hand, Future Networks will help to decrease the capital and operational expenditures (capex/opex) related to the deployment and management of new applications and infrastructures with substantially reduced service creation time [3]. Nowadays, the introduction of novel technologies is a time-consuming process due the slow standardization process, manual service deployment or the semi-automated management tasks. In the context of mobile networks, the average revenue per user (ARPU) is continuously decreasing, while the demand on mobile traffic keeps growing. This causes a negative response by network operators to invest in new network hardware infrastructure. In order to lay the foundations of Future Mobile Networks, three fields must be improved: Radio, Network and Operations and Management capabilities [4]. * Radio capabilities leverage the spectrum optimization, enhance interference coordination mechanisms and support dynamic radio topologies through the exploitation of higher frequencies, enabling cost-effective dense deployments, intelligent and dynamic coordination of multi Radio Access Technology (RAT), as well as sharing resources, among others. * Network functionalities will enable the creation of an open environment in order to support several use cases in a cost-effective manner by means of the enhancement of user devices, minimizing the number of deployed entities and splitting the control and user plane functions (open its interfaces). * The operation and management capabilities are intended to simplify operations not only in network control tasks but also in the deployment of new services, without increasing the system complexity. This field also includes reactive and proactive mechanisms to enhance the decision-making in control and management operations. This characteristic will enable the deployment of virtualized components, wherever they might be needed. Radio and Network capabilities are topics well-studied in the literature [5; 6; 7; 8]. In [6], a detailed survey and ongoing projects related to 5G networks are presented. This work discusses some emerging technologies, such as massive Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO), cognitive radio, cloud technologies and Device to Device Communication (D2D) in order to tackle the following requirements: enhanced data rate, spectral efficiency, lower latency, deployment and management of ultra dense networks. For their part, [PERSON] et al. [5] describe five disruptive concepts that might impact on the development of 5G Radio requirements.