Modem Design in the Era of 5G and Beyond: The Need for a Formal Approach

In the era of 5G and beyond, adaptive workloads and the need for energy efficiency drive are becoming increasingly vital. Changes in parameters of the physical layer algorithm can cascade throughout the algorithm, requiring additional changes to keep a correct functionality within the timing bounds. These factors drive the process of designing systems for mobile communication towards reconfigurability. In this paper we analyze the trade-offs involved in changing algorithmic parameters and show how reconfigurable systems can be used to produce energy-efficient systems. We argue that we ought to resort to formal models to tame this reconfigurability and examine where existing formal models fall short.