  5G systems aim to achieve extremely high data rates, low end-to-end latency
and ultra-low power consumption. Recently, there has been considerable interest
in the design of 5G physical layer waveforms. One important candidate is
Generalised Frequency Division Multiplexing (GFDM). In order to evaluate its
performance and features, system-level studies should be undertaken in a range
of scenarios. These studies, however, require highly complex computations if
they are performed using bit-level simulators. In this paper, the Mutual
Information (MI) based link quality model (PHY abstraction), which has been
regularly used to implement system-level studies for Orthogonal Frequency
Division Multiplexing (OFDM), is applied to GFDM. The performance of the GFDM
waveform using this model and the bit-level simulation performance is measured
using different channel types. Moreover, a system-level study for a GFDM based
LTE-A system in a realistic scenario, using both a bit-level simulator and this
abstraction model, has been studied and compared. The results reveal the
accuracy of this model using realistic channel data. Based on these results,
the PHY abstraction technique can be applied to evaluate the performance of
GFDM based systems in an effective manner with low complexity. The maximum
difference in the Packet Error Rate (PER) and throughput results in the
abstraction case compared to bit-level simulation does not exceed 4% whilst
offering a simulation time saving reduction of around 62,000 times.
