Seamless and ubiquitous coverage are key factors for future cellular networks. Despite capacity and data rates being the main topics under discussion when envisioning the Fifth Generation (5G) and beyond of mobile communications, network coverage remains one of the major issues since coverage quality highly impacts the system performance and end-user experience. The increasing number of base stations and user terminals is anticipated to negatively impact the network coverage due to increasing interference. Furthermore, the “ubiquitous coverage” use cases, including rural and isolated areas, present a significant challenge for mobile communication technologies. This survey presents an overview of the concept of coverage, highlighting the ways it is studied, measured, and how it impacts the network performance. Additionally, an overlook of the most important key performance indicators influenced by coverage, which may affect the envisioned use cases with respect to throughput, latency, and massive connectivity, are discussed. Moreover, the main existing developments and deployments which are expected to augment the network coverage, in order to meet the requirements of the emerging systems, are presented as well as implementation challenges.

中文翻译：

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蜂窝网络覆盖增强调查：未来部署的挑战和解决方案

无缝和无处不在的覆盖范围是未来蜂窝网络的关键因素。尽管容量和数据速率是设想第五代（5G）及更高版本的移动通信时要讨论的主要主题，但是网络覆盖仍然是主要问题之一，因为覆盖质量会严重影响系统性能和最终用户体验。由于干扰的增加，预计基站和用户终端数量的增加会对网络覆盖产生负面影响。此外，包括农村和偏远地区在内的“无处不在”用例对移动通信技术提出了重大挑战。这项调查概述了覆盖的概念，重点介绍了研究，测量覆盖的方法以及它如何影响网络性能。此外，讨论了受覆盖范围影响的最重要的关键性能指标，这些指标可能会影响吞吐量，延迟和大规模连接性方面的设想用例。此外，还介绍了预期的主要现有开发和部署，它们将扩大网络覆盖范围，以满足新兴系统的需求，并提出实施上的挑战。