Showing posts with label 3GPP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 3GPP. Show all posts

Saturday 4 April 2020

5G eXtended Reality (5G-XR) in 5G System (5GS)


We have been meaning to make a tutorial on augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), mixed reality (MR) and extended reality (XR) for a while but we have only managed to do it. Embedded below is video and slides for the tutorial and also a playlist of different use cases on XR from around the world.

If you are not familiar with the 5G Service Based Architecture (SBA) and 5G Core (5GC), best to check this earlier tutorial before going further. A lot of comments are generally around Wi-Fi instead of 5G being used for indoors and we completely agree. 3GPP 5G architecture is designed to cater for any access in addition to 5G access. We have explained it here and here. This guest post also nicely explains Network Convergence of Mobile, Broadband and Wi-Fi.





XR use cases playlist



A lot of info on this topic is from Qualcomm, GSMA, 3GPP and 5G Americas whitepaper, all of them in the links in the slides.


Related Posts:

Monday 9 March 2020

How LTE RRC (4G) and NR RRC (5G) Protocols are used in Parallel in EN-DC (5G NSA)

Last week I had a fruitful discussion with a fellow blogger on the web, Martin Sauter (@mobilesociety) regarding a post in which he compared features of LTE RRC (3GPP 36.331) and NR RRC (3GPP 38.331).

It was Martin's impression that the NR RRC protocol is primarily designed to be used in the 5G standalone mode. However, as I wrote in a comment to his post the NR RRC protocol is already used in EN-DC radio connections.

The reason is that the UE must be informed about Hundreds of lower layer 5G parameters (physical, MAC, RLC) that are needed for the payload transmission over 5G frequencies. Indeed, when it comes to user plane data transmission the gNB works almost independently and the UE must handle LTE and NR radio links in parallel.So it has two different radio units (even if combined into a single radio chip set). This double-functionality is also one important reason why 5G smartphones are quite expensive. It is a lot of software and know-how that sits inside these chips.

How much surplus code is really necessary to enable 5G technology becomes visible when looking at trace data using a state-of-the-art protocol test and monitoring tool.

When reading the 3GPP 36.331 (LTE RRC) standard document one might have the impression that just a few 5G parameters have been incorporated into this protocol to support EN-DC connections.

However, when looking into the details of e.g. the nr-SecondaryCellGroupConfig-r15 it turns out that some this single information element is indeed a huge block of NR information (total size: 1111 Byte)

It is an entire 5G RRC message (rRCReconfiguration) that is piggybacked by the LTE rrcConnectionReconfiguration message, because in 5G non-standalone mode this is the only way to transmit 5G signaling information to the UE. And as highlighted in the upper part of the screenshot there are a couple of NR RRC messages transported in so-called NR-RRCContainers* during the EN-DC Establishment Procedure.

And what about 5G standalone mode? For this radio access technology the 3GPP 38.331 Rel. 15 protocol is suitable as well. Hence, some parameters mentioned in the standard paper will never be seen in EN-DC. A perfect example is S-NSSAI (Single Network Slice Selection Assistance Information), because network slicing requires the connection with a 5G core network as a prerequisite. 


(click on image for larger version)

* This is not an 3GPP term, but coined by the developers of the decoding engine.

Tuesday 21 January 2020

How MOCN RAN-Sharing Works

Shared RAN deployment scenarios are an excellent opportunity for mobile network operators to lower their investments on both, network hardware and operational costs by sharing resources.

The MORAN approach where each operator continues to have its dedicated spectrum (= radio network cells) is easy to understand.

However, the Multi-Operator Core Network (MOCN) is a bit more complex, especially if one of the involved operators asks for service assurance KPIs that apply to its - and only its - subscribers. In this case it is a prerequisite to find out which "call" belongs to which core network operator to enable further KPI correlation and aggregation.

The figure below illustrates how this works:

(click on picture for larger version)

In the System Information Block (SIB) 1 of the cell a list of PLMN-IDs is broadcasted followed by a single Tracking Area Code (which can be combined each of the PLMN-IDs to get multiple TAIs) and a single Cell Identity.

Encoding is specified in 3GPP 36.331 (RRC) as follows:

SystemInformationBlockType1 ::=     SEQUENCE {
    cellAccessRelatedInfo              SEQUENCE {
       plmn-IdentityList                 PLMN-IdentityList,
       trackingAreaCode                  TrackingAreaCode,
       cellIdentity                      CellIdentity,

The spec further defines that the ECGI is the CellIdentiy combined with the first (!!!) PLMN-ID from the PLMN-ID List:

CellGlobalIdEUTRA field descriptions
cellIdentity
Identity of the cell within the context of the PLMN.
plmn-Identity
Identifies the PLMN of the cell as given by the first PLMN entry in the plmn-IdentityList in SystemInformationBlockType1.

So there is one and only 1 ECGI per radio cell in the network, but multiple PLMN-IDs and hence, multiple TAI, one fore each core network operator, are broadcasted.

During RRC establishement a particular UE signals on behalf on the selected PLMN-ID information element in the RRC Connection Setup Complete message to which core network operator shall be used.

This information is "translated" by the eNB into ECGI and TAI with different PLMN-IDs. While the ECGI displays the PLMN-ID of the operator that owns the RAN equipment the TAI shows the selected PLMN-ID of the UE's core network operator. 

Related Posts:

Monday 9 December 2019

5G Evolution with Matthew Baker, Nokia


I wrote a summary of CW (Cambridge Wireless) TEC conference here a couple of months back. The last session was on "Getting ready for Beyond-5G Era". Matthew Baker, Head of Radio Physical Layer & Co-existence Standardization, Nokia Bell Labs was one of the speakers. His talk provided a summary of 3GPP Rel-15 and then gave a nice and short summary of all the interesting things coming in Rel-16 and being planned for Rel-17. The slides from his presentation is embedded below:



Nokia also created a short video where Matthew talks about these new features. It's embedded below:



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Tuesday 24 September 2019

When does your 5G NSA Device Show 5G Icon?


After I wrote about the 5G Icon Display back in February, I received lots of other useful and related materials, mostly from 3GPP standards delegates. Based on this updated information, I created a presentation and video called 'The 5G Icon Story'. Only recently did I realize that I didn't add it to the blog. So here it is.

And for people who are impatient and directly want to jump to the main point, it's UpperLayerIndication in SIB 2 as can be seen above.

The slides and video is embedded below.





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Tuesday 13 August 2019

New 3GPP Release-17 Study Item on NR-Lite (a.k.a. NR-Light)

3GPP TSG RAN#84 was held from June 3 – 6, 2019 at Newport Beach, California. Along with a lot of other interesting topics for discussion, one of the new ones for Release-17 was called NR-Lite (not 5G-lite). Here are some of the things that was being discussed for the Study item.
In RP-190831, Nokia proposed:
  • NR-Lite should address new use cases with IoT-type of requirements that cannot be met by eMTC and NB-IoT:
    • Higher data rate & reliability and lower latency than eMTC & NB-IoT
    • Lower cost/complexity and longer battery life than NR eMBB
    • Wider coverage than URLLC
  • Requirements and use cases –
    • Data rates up to 100 Mbps to support e.g. live video feed, visual production control, process automation
    • Latency of around [10-30] ms to support e.g. remote drone operation, cooperative farm machinery, time-critical sensing and feedback, remote vehicle operation
    • Module cost comparable to LTE
    • Coverage enhancement of [10-15]dB compared to URLLC
    • Battery life [2-4X] longer than eMBB
  • Enable single network to serve all uses in industrial environment
    • URLLC, MBB & positioning

The spider chart on the right shows the requirements for different categories of devices like NB-IoT, eMTC (LTE-M), NR-LITE, URLLC and eMBB.
The understanding in the industry is that over the next 5 years, a lot of 4G spectrum, in addition to 2G/3G spectrum, would have been re-farmed for 5G. By introducing NR-Lite, there would be no requirement to maintain multiple RATs. Also, NR-Lite can take advantage of 5G system architecture and features such as slicing, flow-based QoS, etc.
Qualcomm's views in RP-190844 were very similar to those of Nokia's. In their presentation, the existing 5G devices are billed as 'Premium 5G UEs' while NR-Lite devices are described as 'Low tier 5G UEs'. This category is sub-divided into Industrial sensors/video monitoring, Low-end wearables and Relaxed IoT.

The presentation provides more details on PDCCH Design, Co-existence of premium and Low Tier UEs, Peak Power and Battery Life Optimizations, Contention-Based UL for Small Data Transmission, Relaying for Wearable and Mesh for Relaxed IoT
Ericsson's presentation described NR-Lite for Industrial Sensors and Wearables in RP-191047. RP-191048 was submitted as New SID (Study Item Description) on NR-Lite for Industrial Sensors and Wearables. The SID provides the following details:

The usage scenarios that have been identified for 5G are enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), massive machine-type communication (mMTC), and time critical machine-type communication (cMTC). In particular, mMTC and cMTC are associated with novel IoT use cases that are targeted in vertical industries. 

In the 3GPP study on “self-evaluation towards IMT-2020 submission” it was confirmed that NB IoT and LTE M fulfill the IMT-2020 requirements for mMTC and can be certified as 5G technologies. For cMTC support, URLLC was introduced in Release 15 for both LTE and NR, and NR URLLC is further enhanced in Release 16 within the enhanced URLLC (eURLLC) and Industrial IoT work items.

One important objective of 5G is to enable connected industries. 5G connectivity can serve as catalyst for next wave of industrial transformation and digitalization, which improve flexibility, enhance productivity and efficiency, and improve operational safety. The transformed, digitalized, and connected industry is often referred to as Industry 4.0. Industrial sensors and actuators are prevalently used in many industries, already today. Vast varieties of sensors and actuators are also used in automotive, transport, power grid, logistics, and manufacturing industries. They are deployed for analytics, diagnostics, monitoring, asset tracking, process control, regulatory control, supervisory control, safety control, etc. It is desirable to connect these sensors and actuators to 5G networks. 

The massive industrial wireless sensor network (IWSN) use cases and requirements described in TR 22.804, TS 22.104 and TS 22.261 do include not only cMTC services with very high requirements, but also relatively low-end services with the requirement of small device form factors, and/or being completely wireless with a battery life of several years. 

The most low-end services could already be met by NB-IoT and LTE-M but there are, excluding URLLC, more high-end services that would be challenging. In summary, many industrial sensor requirements fall in-between the well-defined performance objectives which have driven the design of eMBB, URLLC, and mMTC. Thus, many of the industrial sensors have connectivity requirements that are not yet best served by the existing 3GPP NR technology components. Some of the aforementioned requirements of IWSN use cases are also applicable to other wide-area use cases, such as wearables. For example, smart watches or heath-monitoring wearables require small device form factors and wireless operation with weeks, months, or years of battery life, while not requiring the most demanding latency or data rates. 

IWSN and wearable use cases therefore can motivate the introduction of an NR-based solution. Moreover, there are other reasons why it is motivated to introduce a native NR solution for this use case: 
  • It is desired to have a unified NR based solution.
  • An NR solution could provide better coexistence with NR URLLC, e.g., allowing TDD configurations with better URLLC performance than LTE.
  • An NR solution could provide more efficient coexistence with NR URLLC since the same numerology (e.g., SCS) can be adopted for the mMTC part and the URLLC part.
  • An NR solution addresses all IMT-2020 5G frequency bands, including higher bands and TDD bands (in FR1 and FR2).
The intention with this study item is to study a UE feature and parameter list with lower end capabilities, relative to Release 15 eMBB or URLLC NR, and identify the requirements which shall be fulfilled. E.g., requirements on UE battery life, latency, reliability, connection density, data rate, UE complexity and form factor, etc.  If not available, new potential NR features for meeting these requirements should further be studied.

There were other description of the SID from Samsung, ZTE, etc. but I am not detailing them here. The main idea is to provide an insight for people who may be curious about this feature.


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Monday 5 August 2019

An Introduction to Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN)


I made a short introductory tutorial explaining what is meant by Non-Terrestrial Networks. There is is lot of work on this that is planned for Release-17. Slides and video below.






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Friday 2 August 2019

3GPP Minimization of Drive Test (MDT) Signaling at a Glance

There are growing numbers of UEs that are capable of reporting 3GPP-defined measurements for the purpose of minimization of drive test as defined in 3GPP TS 37.320. Although only a subset of the capable devices have this feature enabled it is worth to have a closer look at the signaling procedures and measurements.

3GPP MDT data can be gathered in two different modes: immediate and logged.

immediate mode – as illustrated in figure 1 - provides measurements for RAN and UE. The UE measurements are derived from RRC measurement reports. The RAN adds the power headroom reported on the MAC layer, and the Received Interference Power (RIP) measured on the physical radio interface layer at the cell`s antenna as well as, reports for the data volume, IP throughput, user plane packet delay, and packet loss measured by the eNodeB.
Figure 1: Immediate 3GPP MDT Measurements*

logged mode – an example is shown in Figure 2 - the UE stores information related to accessibility problems in IDLE mode, failures during RRC establishment, and handover random access as well as radio link failures including connection loss. The MDT events log is sent to the network when it is requested. After connection loss, the MDT logged mode report is sent after the next successful radio connection establishment.

Figure 2: Logged 3GPP MDT Measurements*

The RRC measurement samples and Radio Link Failure (RLF) reports also contain detailed location information for example, on GPS/GNSS coordinates, although the 3GPP Release 9 Technical Report TR 36.805 stated: “The extensive use of positioning component of the UE shall be avoided since it would significantly increase the UE power consumption.”

Although, the encoding of logged mode reports and immediate UE measurements are defined in 3GPP TS 36.331 (RRC), the message formatting of the immediate RAN measurement events follow different proprietary specifications of the network element manufacturers (NEMs).

It is also up to the NEMs which of the M2... M7 immediate reports are implemented and how often such measurements will be generated during an ongoing connection. 

* all parameter values shown in the figures have been chosen randomly for illustrative purpose and do not reflect the situation of a real call or network 

Tuesday 9 July 2019

3GPP 5G Standardization Update post RAN#84 (July 2019)

3GPP recently conducted a webinar with Balazs Bertenyi, Chairman of 3GPP RAN in which he goes through some of the key features for 5G Phase 2. The webinar also goes through the details of 5G Release-15 completion, status of Release-16 and a preview of some of Release-17 features.

Slides & video embedded below. Slides can be downloaded from 3GPP website here.







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Tuesday 18 June 2019

3GPP Release-16, Release-17 & Beyond...

6G Summit featured quite a few talks from people looking at evolution beyond Release-16. The future releases will still be 5G, maybe become 5.5G, like 3GPP Release-13 which was known as LTE-Advanced Pro officially was unofficially known as 4.5G.


Back at the 6G Summit in Finland, Dr. Peiying Zhu from Huawei looked at the topics being discussed for Release-17 and beyond.


Thanks to Mika Klemettinen for sharing the pictures on Twitter, as the presentation was not shared.

3GPP is working towards defining Release-16. TS 21.916 - Release description; Release 16 is still not yet available on the 3GPP reflector. Once that is available, we will know for sure about all the Rel-16 changes. Release-17 is long way away. Having said that, there is no shortage of discussions as some of these Rel-17 features were discussed in the recent RAN Plenary.
Jungwon Lee, VP, Samsung also shared a summary of 3GPP Release-16 and Rel-17 features at IEEE 5G Summit in San Diego recently. Quite a few interesting features in all the pictures above that we will no doubt look at in the future posts.

3GPP also shared a presentation recently (embedded below), looking at not only Release-15 & 16 but also looking at focus areas for Release-17




Related Posts and Articles:
  • The 3G4G Blog - Ultra Reliability: 5x9s (99.999%) in 3GPP Release-15 vs 6x9s (99.9999%) in 3GPP Release-16
  • The 3G4G Blog - Update from 3GPP on LTE & 5G Mission Critical Communications
  • 3GPP - Release 16
  • Light Reading - 5G Standards Group Struggles to Balance Tech With Politics
  • Eiko Seidel - 5G Mission Critical Networks (Proximity Services in Rel.17)
  • The 3G4G Blog - Slides and Videos from the 1st 6G Wireless Summit - March 2019
  • The 3G4G Blog - Couple of talks by NTT Docomo on 5G and Beyond (pre-6G)
  • The 3G4G Blog - China Telecom: An examination of the current industrial trends and an outlook of 6G
  • Mission Critical Communications: Mission-Critical Features for Release 17 Discussed at Latest 3GPP Meetings

Monday 6 May 2019

Non-public networks (NPN) - Private Networks by another name


3GPP TS 22.261, Service requirements for the 5G system; Stage 1 gives a definition of non-public network which is simply defined as 'a network that is intended for non-public use'. Section 6.25 provides more info

Non-public networks are intended for the sole use of a private entity such as an enterprise, and may be deployed in a variety of configurations, utilising both virtual and physical elements. Specifically, they may be deployed as completely standalone networks, they may be hosted by a PLMN, or they may be offered as a slice of a PLMN.

In any of these deployment options, it is expected that unauthorised UEs, those that are not associated with the enterprise, will not attempt to access the non-public network, which could result in resources being used to reject that UE and thereby not be available for the UEs of the enterprise. It is also expected that UEs of the enterprise will not attempt to access a network they are not authorised to access. For example, some enterprise UEs may be restricted to only access the non-public network of the enterprise, even if PLMN coverage is available in the same geographic area. Other enterprise UEs may be able to access both a non-public network and a PLMN where specifically allowed.

The requirements section is interesting too:
  • The 5G system shall support non-public networks.
  • The 5G system shall support non-public networks that provide coverage within a specific geographic area.
  • The 5G system shall support both physical and virtual non-public networks. 
  • The 5G system shall support standalone operation of a non-public network, i.e. a non-public network may be able to operate without dependency on a PLMN.
  • Subject to an agreement between the operators and service providers, operator policies and the regional or national regulatory requirements, the 5G system shall support for non-public network subscribers:
    • access to subscribed PLMN services via the non-public network;
    • seamless service continuity for subscribed PLMN services between a non-public network and a PLMN;
    • access to selected non-public network services via a PLMN;
    • seamless service continuity for non-public network services between a non-public network and a PLMN.
  • A non-public network subscriber to access a PLMN service shall have a service subscription using 3GPP identifiers and credentials provided or accepted by a PLMN.
  • The 5G system shall support a mechanism for a UE to identify and select a non-public network.
    • NOTE: Different network selection mechanisms may be used for physical vs virtual non-public networks.
  • The 5G system shall support identifiers for a large number of non-public networks to minimize collision likelihood between assigned identifiers.
  • The 5G system shall support a mechanism to prevent a UE with a subscription to a non-public network from automatically selecting and attaching to a PLMN or non-public network it is not authorised to select.
  • The 5G system shall support a mechanism to prevent a UE with a subscription to a PLMN from automatically selecting and attaching to a non-public network it is not authorised to select. 
  • The 5G system shall support a change of host of a non-public network from one PLMN to another PLMN without changing the network selection information stored in the UEs of the non-public network.


5G ACIA (5G Alliance for Connected Industries and Automation), a Working Party of ZVEI (German Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers’ Association) published a White Paper on '5G Non-Public Networks for Industrial Scenarios'.

This paper describes four industrial (IIoT) deployment scenarios for 3GPP-defined 5G non-public networks. The paper also considers key aspects, in particular service attributes that can help to highlight the differences between these scenarios. In contrast to a network that offers mobile network services to the general public, a 5G non-public network (NPN, also sometimes called a private network) provides 5G network services to a clearly defined user organisation or group of organisations.

The PDF of the white paper is available here.

Monday 29 April 2019

Evolution of Security from 4G to 5G


Dr. Anand Prasad, who is well known in the industry, not just as CISO of Rakuten Mobile Networks but also as the Chairman of 3GPP SA3, the mobile communications security and privacy group, recently delivered a talk on '4G to 5G Evolution: In-Depth Security Perspective'.


The video of the talk is embedded below and the slides are available here.



An article on similar topic by Anand Prasad, et al. is also available on 3GPP website here.


Related posts and articles:

Thursday 21 March 2019

Update from 3GPP on LTE & 5G Mission Critical Communications


Adrian Scrase, CTO of ETSI & Head of MCC, 3GPP presented an update at BAPCO / CCE 2019 on Public Safety LTE and 5G. His presentation is embedded below.

There has been quite a progress in this area since I wrote my last post on Release-14 here.
This is the list of features that are planned for Release-16. There is also an update on Satellite communications but I will look at it separately in another post. Here are the slides:



The presentation can be directly downloaded from 3GPP website here.

Related posts:

Thursday 7 March 2019

Updated 5G Terminology Presentation (Feb 2019)


I made this video before MWC with the intention to educate the attendees about the various architecture options and 5G terminologies being discussed. As always, happy to get feedback on what can be done better. Slides followed by video below.







Complete list of our training resources are available on 3G4G page here.

Sunday 17 February 2019

Displaying 5G Network Status Icon on Smartphones and Other Devices

A more updated presentation & video on this topic is available on 3G4G '5G Training' page here.
Who thought displaying of network status icon on 5G devices would be so much fun. Typically the network icons are more of:
2G - Gsm, G, G+, E
3G - 3G, H, H+
4G - 4G, 4G+

Back in 2017, Samsung devices started displaying 4G+ icon. Samsung told mybroadband:

that by default its devices require a network to support Category 6 LTE, and for the total combined bandwidth to exceed 20MHz, before they will display the “4G+” icon.

Networks in South Africa frequently don’t have over 20MHz of aggregated bandwidth available, though.

As a result, one network asked Samsung to reduce the combined bandwidth requirement for the 4G+ icon to display to 15MHz, which Samsung approved.

“Samsung’s global policy regarding the display of the LTE/LTE-A/4G/4G+ network icon is that the network icon display is operator-configurable upon official request and Samsung approval,” it said.

The reason this is interesting is because LTE is really 3.9G but generally called 4G. LTE-A is supposed to be 4G because in theory it meets IMT-Advanced criteria. Then we have LTE-Advanced Pro, which is known as 4.5G. While in majority of the operators display 4.5G as 4G or 4G+, couple of operators has decided to become a bit innovative.

AT&T started by updating the network icons of some of their devices to 5GE, which is their way of saying 4.5G. E stands for Evolution. Or as some people joked, it stands for economy (or value) version, as opposed to premium version.


Brazilian operator Claro, decided to use the 4.5G icon but the 5 is much larger font compared to 4 (see the pic above). Some people call this as dishonest attempt by them.

I see a few people asking how can devices decide if they are on 4G or 4.5G. There is no standard procedure for this and is UE specific. One way is to look at RRC messages. If the system information messages contain optional IE's for 3GPP Release-13, then the network supports LTE-A Pro and if the device supports the features for LTE-A Pro, it can display 4.5G or 5GE, etc. Another approach is the optional IEs present in NAS Attach Accept message. As this comes slightly later in the registration process, the device displays 4G first and once the registration is complete, 4.5G. Note there is no requirement from standards point of  view about displaying of the network status indication icon up to 4G/4.5G.

To avoid such confusion in 5G, 3GPP submitted the first Liaison statement S2-175303. In this, 3GPP said:

With this number of System and Radio access options available, one or more new status icons are expected to appear on the User Interface of future (mobile) devices. A user should expect consistency across devices and networks as to what icons actually mean (i.e. what services might be expected when an icon is displayed).

While 3GPP specifications are not expected to define or discuss Service or RAT indicators in the User Interface themselves, 3GPP should provide the necessary tools in EPS and 5GS to enable them. It is therefore necessary to understand the conditions required for displaying these icons and with which granularity so we can identify what information ought to be available in/made available to the device.

SA2 understands that Status Icons related to 5G might be displayed for example on a UE display taking into account all or some combinations of these items (other items may exist):
- Access Restriction Data in subscription (with the potential exception of emergency access); 
- UE CN registration (i.e. is UE EPC- and/or 5GC-registered?);
- UE capabilities; 
- Network capabilities; 
- UE is camping on a cell of NG-RAN supporting NR only, E-UTRA only or, the ability to activate dual connectivity with another RAT (NR or E-UTRA);
- UE is camping on a cell of E-UTRAN (connected to EPC) with the ability to activate dual connectivity with NR as secondary cell;
- UE is in connected mode using NR, E-UTRA (in 5GS) or dual connectivity between E-UTRA and NR.

Given the above, SA2 would like to kindly ask for any feedback from GSMA FNW and NGMN on requirements and granularity for Service indicators and/or RAT indicators related to 5G.

GSMA responded in R2-1713952. 6 cases have been identified (see the first picture on top) :

The configurations consist of the following states and are as described in Table 1:

  1. EPS NR NSA (EN-DC) capable UE attached to EPC and currently in IDLE state under or in RRC_connected state connected to E-UTRAN cell not supporting LTE-NR dual connectivity 
  2. EPS NR NSA (EN-DC) capable UE attached to EPC and currently in IDLE state under or in RRC_Connected state connected to AND active on LTE for uplink and downlink on only E-UTRAN cell supporting LTE-NR dual connectivity and has not detected NR coverage (i.e. UE is not under NR coverage and/or not configured to make NR measurements)
  3. EPS NR NSA (EN-DC) capable UE attached to EPC and currently in RRC_Connected state connected to E-UTRAN cell (supporting dual connectivity) and active on LTE for uplink and downlink only and has detected NR coverage (i.e. UE is under NR coverage and has been configured to make NR measurements) 
  4. EPS NR NSA (EN-DC) capable UE attached to EPC and currently in IDLE state under E-UTRAN cell supporting LTE-NR dual connectivity and has detected NR coverage (i.e. UE is under NR coverage and has been configured to make NR measurements)
  5. EPS NR NSA (EN-DC) capable UE attached to EPC and currently in RRC_Connected state connected to E-UTRAN cell (supporting dual connectivity) and active on LTE and NR for uplink and/or downlink
  6. 5GS capable UE attached to 5GC and currently in IDLE state under or in RRC_Connected state connected to NG-RAN (eLTE (option 5 or 7) or NR (option 2 or 4) cell)

As there is no consensus on a single preferred configuration, it is desirable to make the display of 5G status icon in the UE configurable such that the display of 5G status icon can be made depending on operator preference. 

This proposal by GSMA was noted by 3GPP in R2-1803949.

RAN WG2 would like to inform GSMA and SA2 that, according to GSMA and SA2 recommendations (LSs R2-1713952 and S2-175270, respectively), RAN WG2 introduced 1 bit indication per PLMN called “upperLayerIndication” within LTE SIB 2. 

This bit enables the realization of the configurations based on UE states as per recommendation from GSMA (e.g. RRC_IDLE UE as for State 2 in LS R2-1713952 from GSMA)”. 

For idle mode UEs this is the only mechanism agreed. 

Actions: RAN WG2 would like to ask GSMA and SA2 to take the information above into account. 

Hopefully there will be less confusion when 5G is rolled out about the status icons. In the meantime we might see some more 4.5G icon innovations.

Monday 29 October 2018

Overview 3GPP 5G NR Physical Layer

3GPP held a workshop on 5G NR submission towards IMT-2020 last week. You can access all the agenda, documents, etc. on the 3GPP website here. You can also get a combined version of all presentations from the 3G4G website here. I also wrote a slightly detailed article on this workshop on 3G4G website here.

One of the presentations on 'Physical layer structure, numerology and frame structure, NR spectrum utilization mechanism 3GPP 5G NR submission towards IMT-2020' by Havish Koorapaty, Ericsson is a good introductory material on 5G New Radio (NR) Physical Layer. It is embedded below (thanks to Eiko Seidel for sharing) and the PDF can be downloaded from slideshare or 3G4G website here.



Related Links:

Monday 24 September 2018

5G New Radio Standards and other Presentations


A recent Cambridge Wireless event 'Radio technology for 5G – making it work' was an excellent event where all speakers delivered an interesting and insightful presentation. These presentations are all available to view and download for everyone for a limited time here.

I blogged about the base station antennas last week but there are other couple of presentations that stood out for me.


The first was an excellent presentation from Sylvia Lu from u-Blox, also my fellow CW Board Member. Her talk covered variety of topics including IoT, IIoT, LTE-V2X and Cellular positioning, including 5G NR Positioning Trend. The presentation is embedded below and available to download from Slideshare





The other presentation on 5G NR was one from Yinan Qi of Samsung R&D. His presentation looked at variety of topics, mainly Layer 1 including Massive MIMO, Beamforming, Beam Management, Bandwidth Part, Reference Signals, Phase noise, etc. His presentation is embedded below and can be downloaded from SlideShare.




Related Posts:

Friday 22 June 2018

5G and IoT Security Update from ETSI Security Week 2018

ETSI Security Week 2018 (link) was held at ETSI's Headquarters in Sophia Antipolis, South of France last week. It covered wide variety of topics including 5G, IoT, Cybersecurity, Middlebox, Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), etc. As 5G and IoT is of interest to the readers of this blog, I am providing links to the presentations so anyone interested can check them out at leisure.


Before we look at the presentations, what exactly was the point of looking at 5G Security? Here is an explanation from ETSI:

5G phase 1 specifications are now done, and the world is preparing for the arrival of 5G networks. A major design goal of 5G is a high degree of flexibility to better cater for specific needs of actors from outside the telecom sector (e.g. automotive industry, mission-critical organisations). During this workshop, we will review how well 5G networks can provide security for different trust models, security policies, and deployment scenarios – not least for ongoing threats in the IoT world. 5G provides higher flexibility than legacy networks by network slicing and virtualization of functions. The workshop aims to discuss how network slicing could help in fulfilling needs for different users of 5G networks.

5G will allow the use of different authentication methods. This raises many interesting questions. How are these authentication methods supported in devices via the new secure element defined in ETSI SCP, or vendor-specific concepts? How can mission-critical and low-cost IoT use cases coexist side-by-side on the same network?

The 5G promise of higher flexibility is also delivered via its Service-Based Architecture (SBA). SBA provides open 3rd party interfaces to support new business models which allow direct impact on network functions. Another consequence of SBA is a paradigm shift for inter-operator networks: modern APIs will replace legacy signaling protocols between networks. What are the relevant security measures to protect the SBA and all parties involved? What is the role of international carrier networks like IPX in 5G?

Event Objectives
The workshop intends to:

  • Gather different actors involved in the development of 5G, not only telecom, and discuss together how all their views have shaped phase 1 of 5G, to understand how security requirements were met, and what challenges remain;
  • Discuss slicing as a means to implement separate security policies and compartments for independent tenants on the same infrastructure;
  • Give an update of what is happening in 3GPP 5G security;
  • Explain to IoT players what 5G security can (and cannot) do for them, including risks and opportunities related to alternative access credentials;
  • Understand stakeholders' (PMNs, carriers, GSMA, vendors) needs to make SBA both secure and successful. How can SBA tackle existing issues in interconnect networks like fraud, tracking, privacy breaches;
  • Allow vendors to present interesting proposals for open security questions in 5G: secure credential store, firewalling SBA's RESTful APIs;
  • Debate about hot topics such as: IoT security, Slicing security, Privacy, Secure storage and processing and Security of the interconnection network.


So here are the relevant presentations:

Session 1: Input to 5G: Views from Different Stakeholders
Session Chair: Bengt Sahlin, Ericsson

Hardening a Mission Critical Service Using 5G, Peter Haigh, NCSC

Security in the Automotive Electronics Area, Alexios Lekidis, SecurityMatters

Integrating the SIM (iUICC), Adrian Escott, QUALCOMM

Smart Secure Platform, Klaus Vedder, Giesecke & Devrient, ETSI SCP Chairman

Network Slicing, Anne-Marie Praden, Gemalto

Don't build on Sand: Validating the Security Requirements of NFV Infrastructure to Confidently Run Slices, Nicolas Thomas, Fortinet

5G Enhancements to Non-3GPP Access Security, Andreas Kunz, Lenovo

Security and Privacy of IoT in 5G, Marcus Wong, Huawei Technologies

ITU-T activities and Action Plan on 5G Security, Yang Xiaoya, ITU-T SG17

Wrap up: 5G Overview from 3GPP SA3 Perspective and What is There to Be Done for Phase 2, Sander Kievit, TNO


Session 2: Security in 5G Inter-Network Signalling
Session Chair: Stefan Schroeder, T-Systems

Presentation on SBA: Introduction of the Topic and Current Status in SA3, Stefan Schroeder, T-Systems

5G Inter-PLMN Security: The Trade-off Between Security and the Existing IPX Business Model, Ewout Pronk, KPN on behalf of GSMA Diameter End to End Security Subgroup

Secure Interworking Between Networks in 5G Service Based Architecture, Silke Holtmanns, Nokia Bell Labs

Security Best Practises using RESTful APIs, Sven Walther, CA Technologies

Identifying and Managing the Issues around 5G Interconnect Security, Stephen Buck, Evolved Intelligence

Zero Trust Security Posture in 5G Architecture, Galina Pildush, Palo Alto Networks (Missing)


Session 1 & 2 Workshop Wrap up: 5G Phase 1 Conclusions and Outlook Towards Phase 2 - Stefan Schroeder, T-Systems and Bengt Sahlin, Ericsson


Session 5: Benefits and Challenges of 5G and IoT From a Security Perspective
Session Chair: Arthur van der Wees, Arthur's Legal

Setting the Scene, Franck Boissière, European Commission

ENISA's View on Security Implications of IoT and 5G, Apostolos Malatras, ENISA

Smart City Aspects, Bram Reinders, Institute for Future of Living

The Network Operators Perspective on IoT Security, Ian Smith, GSMA


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