The reason of naming “new radio” is that this air interface will not be backward compatible with any 4G standards such as
LTE⁃Advanced⁃pro.
This new radio interface can be deployed stand⁃alone, i.e., an independent network not relying on other networks.
NR can also be deployed in non⁃stand⁃alone fashion, i.e., along with LTE⁃Advanced⁃pro, since LTE evolution is also considered part of 5G.
At the physical layer, potential technical areas of NR include multiple access, waveform, channel coding, frame structure, multiple⁃input multiple⁃output (MI⁃MO), device⁃to⁃device (D2D), vehicle⁃to⁃vehicle (V2V), unlicensed spectrum, etc.