  In this article, the first considerations for the 5G New Radio (NR) physical
layer evolution to support beyond 52.6GHz communications are provided. In
addition, the performance of both OFDM based and DFT-s-OFDM based networks are
evaluated with special emphasis on the phase noise (PN) induced distortion. It
is shown that DFT-s-OFDM is more robust against PN under 5G NR Release 15
assumptions, namely regarding the supported phase tracking reference signal
(PTRS) designs, since it enables more effective PN mitigation directly in the
time domain. To further improve the PN compensation capabilities, the PTRS
design for DFT-s-OFDM is revised, while for the OFDM waveform a novel block
PTRS structure is introduced, providing similar link performance as DFT-s-OFDM
with enhanced PTRS design. We demonstrate that the existing 5G NR Release 15
solutions can be extended to support efficient mobile communications at 60GHz
carrier frequency with the enhanced PTRS structures. In addition, DFT-s-OFDM
based downlink for user data could be considered for beyond 52.6GHz
communications to further improve system power efficiency and performance with
higher order modulation and coding schemes. Finally, network link budget and
cell size considerations are provided, showing that at certain bands with
specific transmit power regulation, the cell size can eventually be downlink
limited.
