Showing posts with label 5G-Advanced. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 5G-Advanced. Show all posts

Friday 8 December 2023

6G Global - Videos & Presentations from Mobile Korea 2023

5G Forum, South Korea organises Mobile Korea conference every year. Mobile Korea 2023 had two conferences within it, '6G Global', looking at 'Beyond Connectivity and New Possibilities', and '5G Vertical Summit', looking at 'Leading to Sustainable Society with 5G'.

I often complain about how organisations working in 6G often lack social networks skills, in this case, even the website is not very user friendly and doesn't contain a lot of details. Full marks for uploading the videos on YouTube though.

Anyway, here are the videos and presentations that were shared from the summit:

  • Opening + Keynote Session - Moderator : LEE, HyeonWoo, DanKook University
    • Standardization and Technical Trend for 6G, SungHyun CHOI, Samsung Research (video, presentation)
  • Session 1 : 6G Global Trend - Moderator : JaeHoon CHUNG, LG Electronics Inc.
    • Thoughts on standardization and Industry priorities to ensure timely market readiness for 6G, Sari NIELSEN, Nokia (video, presentation)
    • On the convergence route for 6G, Wen TONG, Huawei (video, presentation)
    • The Path from 5G to 6G: Vision and Technology, Edward G. TIEDMANN, Qualcomm Technologies  (video, presentation)
    • Shaping 6G – Technology and Services, Bo HAGERMAN, Ericsson (video, presentation)
  • Government Session
    • Keynote : Korea's 6G R&D Promotion Strategy, KyeongRae CHO, Ministry of Science and ICT (video, presentation)
  • Session 2 : 6G Global Collaboration - Moderator : Juho LEE, Samsung Electronics
  • 6G R&D and promotion in Japan, Kotaro KUWAZU, B5GPC (video, presentation)
    • Technology evolution toward beyond 5G and 6G, Charlie ZHANG, Samsung Research (video, presentation)
    • AI-Native RAN and Air Interface : Promises and Challenges, Balaji Raghothaman, Keysight (video, presentation)
    • Enabling 6G Research through Rapid Prototyping and Test LEE, SeYong, (NI) (video, presentation)
    • Global Collaborative R&D Activities for Advanced Radio Technologies, JaeHoon CHUNG, LG Electronics (video, presentation)
    • International research collaboration – key to a sustainable 6G road, Thomas HAUSTEIN, Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute (video, presentation)
    • 6G as Cellular Network 2.0: A Networked Computing Perspective, KyungHan LEE, Seoul National University (video, presentation)
    • Towards a Sustainable 6G, Marcos KATZ, University of Oulu (video, presentation)
  • Pannel Discussion : Roles of Public Domain in 6G R&D - Moderator : HyeonWoo LEE, DanKook University
  • Session 3 : 6G Global Mega Project - Moderator: YoungJo KO, ETRI
    • Sub-THz band wireless transmission and access technology for 6G Tbps data rate, JuYong LEE, KAIST (video, presentation)
    • The post Shannon Era: Towards Semantic, Goal-Oriented and Reconfigurable Intelligent Environments aided 6G communications, Emilio CALVANESE STRINATI, CEA Leti (video, presentation)
    • Demonstration of 1.4 Tbits wireless transmission using OAM multiplexing technology in the sub-THz band, DooHwan LEE, NTT Corporation (video, presentation)
    • Latest 6G research progress in China, Zhiqin WANG, CAICT (video, presentation)

If there are no links in video/presentation than it hasn't been shared.

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Wednesday 4 October 2023

Presentations from 2nd IEEE Open RAN Summit

The second IEEE SA (Standards Association) Open RAN summit, hosted by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, took place on 9-10 Aug 2023. It covered the topics related to the standardization of Open RAN including O-RAN Alliance, 3GPP, IEEE, various deployment scenarios, testing and integration, Open RAN security, RAN slicing, and RAN optimization among others. 

The videos of the presentations can be viewed on the summit page here or though the video playlist here.

The talk from Dr. Chih-Lin I, O-RAN Alliance TSC Co-Chair and CMCC Chief Scientist, Wireless Technologies on 'AI/ML impact, from 5.5G to 6G' is embedded below:

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Friday 3 February 2023

ATIS Webinar on "3GPP Release 18 Overview: A World of 5G-Advanced"

Yesterday, ATIS, one of the seven 3GPP Organizational Partner (OP), delivered on online webinar on 3GPP Release 18 Overview: The World of 5G-Advanced. A summary of the webinar according to ATIS as follows:

As the first release of 5G-Advanced, Release 18 has been progressing well despite the challenges in fully resuming 3GPP face-to-face meetings in 2022.

In this webinar, ATIS provides a high-level summary of 3GPP Release 18: the confirmed Rel-18 timeline, status for the ongoing study and work items, and the newly converted work items from the completed study items. We also give a brief introduction of the preparation for Release 19 aiming for approval of the package of projects in December 2023.

Distinguished speakers included:

  • Wanshi Chen (Qualcomm, Chair of 3GPP RAN Plenary) will provide a view on radio interface and RAN system aspects.
  • Puneet Jain (Intel, Chair of 3GPP System Architecture Group – SA2) will look at whole system capabilities and network aspects.
  • Moderator: Iain Sharp, Principal Technologist, ATIS

The recording of the webinar is embedded below and slides available here.

Just a reminder, 5G covers Release 15, 16 and 17. 5G-Advanced is Release-18 onwards. Ideally, 18, 18 and 20. 6G should start with Release 21. Based on the current industry adoption of 5G, there is no reason to push the next generation on the operators before it's mature and everyone is ready to take it onboard.

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Monday 22 August 2022

DCCA Features and Enhancements in 5G New Radio

In another new whitepaper on 5G-Advanced, Nokia has detailed DCCA (DC + CA) features and enhancements from Rel-15 until Rel-18. The following is an extract from the paper:

Mobility is one of the essential components of 5G-Advanced. 3GPP has already defined a set of functionalities and features that will be a part of the 5G-Advanced Release 18 package. These functionalities can be grouped into four areas: providing new levels of experience, network extension into new areas, mobile network expansion beyond connectivity, and providing operational support excellence. Mobility enhancements in Release 18 will be an important part of the ‘Experience enhancements” block of features, with the goal of reducing interruption time and improving mobility robustness.

Fig. 2 shows a high-level schematic of mobility and dual connectivity (DC)/Carrier Aggregation (CA) related mechanisms that are introduced in the different 5G legacy releases towards 5G-Advanced in Release 18. Innovations such as Conditional Handover (CHO) and dual active protocol stack (DAPS) are introduced in Release 16. More efficient operation of carrier aggregation (CA), dual connectivity (DC), and the combination of those denoted as DCCA, as well as Multi-Radio Access Technology DC (MR-DC) are introduced through Releases 16 and 17.

For harvesting the full benefits of CA/DC techniques, it is important to have an agile framework where secondary cell(s) are timely identified and configured to the UE when needed. This is of importance for non-standalone (NSA) deployments where a carrier on NR should be quickly configured and activated to take advantage of 5G. Similarly, it is of importance for standalone (SA) cases where e.g. a UE with its Primary Cell (PCell) on NR Frequency Range 1 (FR1) wants to take additional carriers, either on FR1 and/or FR2 bands, into use. Thus, there is a need to support cases where the aggregated carriers are either from the same or difference sites. The management of such additional carriers for a UE shall be highly agile in line with the user traffic and QoS demands; quickly enabling usage of additional carriers when needed and again quickly released when no longer demanded to avoid unnecessary processing at the UE and to reduce its energy consumption. This is of particular importance for users with time-varying traffic demands (aka burst traffic conditions).

In the following, we describe how such carrier management is gradually improved by introducing enhancements for cell identification, RRM measurements and reduced reporting delays from UEs. As well as innovations related to Conditional PSCell Addition and Change (CPAC) and deactivation of secondary cell groups are outlined.

The paper goes on to discuss the following scenarios in detail for DCCA enhancements:

  • Early measurement reporting
  • Secondary cell (SCell) activation time improvements
    • Direct SCell activation
    • Temporary RS (TRS)-based SCell Activation
  • Conditional Secondary Node (SN) addition and change for fast access
  • Activation of secondary cell group

The table below summarizes the DCCA features in 5G NR

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Wednesday 10 August 2022

AI/ML Enhancements in 5G-Advanced for Intelligent Network Automation

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) has been touted to automate the network and simplify the identification and debug of issues that will arise with increasing network complexity. For this reason 3GPP has many different features that are already present in Release-17 but are expected to evolve further in Release-18. 

I have already covered some of this topics in earlier posts. Ericsson's recent whitepaper '5G Advanced: Evolution towards 6G' also has a good summary on this topic. Here is an extract from that:

Intelligent network automation

With increasing complexity in network design, for example, many different deployment and usage options, conventional approaches will not be able to provide swift solutions in many cases. It is well understood that manually reconfiguring cellular communications systems could be inefficient and costly.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have the capability to solve complex and unstructured network problems by using a large amount of data collected from wireless networks. Thus, there has been a lot of attention lately on utilizing AI/ML-based solutions to improve network performance and hence providing avenues for inserting intelligence in network operations.

AI model design, optimization, and life-cycle management rely heavily on data. A wireless network can collect a large amount of data as part of its normal operations. This provides a good base for designing intelligent network solutions. 5G Advanced addresses how to optimize the standardized interfaces for data collection while leaving the automation functionality, for example, training and inference up to the proprietary implementation to support full flexibility in the automation of the network.

AI/ML for RAN enhancements

Three use cases have been identified in the Release 17 study item related to RAN performance enhancement by using AI/ML techniques. Selected use cases from the Release 17 technical report will be taken into the normative phase in the next releases. The selected use cases are: 1) network energy saving; 2) load balancing; and 3) mobility optimization.

The selected use cases can be supported by enhancements to current NR interfaces, targeting performance improvements using AI/ML functionality in the RAN while maintaining the 5G NR architecture. One of the goals is to ensure vendor incentives in terms of innovation and competitiveness by keeping the AI model implementation specific. As shown in Fig.2 (on the top) an intent-based management approach can be adopted for use cases involving RAN-OAM interactions. The intent will be received by the RAN. The RAN will need to understand the intent and trigger certain functionalities as a result.

AI/ML for physical layer enhancements

It is generally expected that AI/ML functionality can be used to improve the radio performance and/or reduced the complexity/overhead of the radio interface. 3GPP TSG RAN has selected three use cases to study the potential air interface performance improvements through AI/ML techniques, such as beam management, channel state information feedback enhancement, and positioning accuracy enhancements for different scenarios. The AI/ML-based methods may provide benefits compared to traditional methods in the radio interface. The challenge will be to define a unified AI/ML framework for the air interface by adequate AI/ML model characterization using various levels of collaboration between gNB and UE.

AI/ML in 5G core

5G Advanced will provide further enhancements of the architecture for analytics and on ML model life-cycle management, for example, to improve correctness of the models. The advancements in the architecture for analytics and data collection serve as a good foundation for AI/ML-based use cases within the different network functions (NFs). Additional use cases will be studied where NFs make use of analytics with the target to support in their decision making, for example, network data analytics functions (NWDAF)- assisted generation of UE policy for network slicing.

If you are interested in studying this topic further, check out 3GPP TR 37.817: Study on enhancement for data collection for NR and ENDC. Download the latest version from here.

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Tuesday 15 February 2022

What Is the Role of AI and ML in the Open RAN and 5G Future?

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have moved on from just being buzzwords to bringing much needed optimization and intelligence in devices, networks and infrastructure; whether on site, on the edge or in the cloud.

Qualcomm has been very active in talking about AI/ML in webinars and on their site. A detailed blog post looking at 'What’s the role of artificial intelligence in the future of 5G and beyond?' is available here. It was posted in time for a Light Reading webinar where Gabriel Brown, Principal Analyst – Mobile Networks and 5G, Heavy Reading and Tingfang Ji, Senior Director, Engineering - Wireless R&D, Qualcomm discuss the topic. The video is embedded below and slide deck is available here.

Louis Scialabba, Senior Director of Marketing at Mavenir, looking at AI and Analytics spoke at Layer 123 conference on the topic, 'AI/ML for Next Gen 5G Mobile Networks'. His talk is embedded below and a blog post by him on the topic, 'The RIC Opens a New World of Opportunities for CSPs' is available here.

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Tuesday 8 February 2022

Extending 5G TDD Coverage With XDD (Cross Division Duplex)

A new 3GPP Technical report, TR 38.858 (draft not available yet) will look at Study on evolution of NR duplex operation (FS_NR_duplex_evo) in Rel-18. RP-213591 provides a justification on why this new duplex evolution needs to be studied:

TDD is widely used in commercial NR deployments. In TDD, the time domain resource is split between downlink and uplink. Allocation of a limited time duration for the uplink in TDD would result in reduced coverage, increased latency and reduced capacity. As a possible enhancement on this limitation of the conventional TDD operation, it would be worth studying the feasibility of allowing the simultaneous existence of downlink and uplink, a.k.a. full duplex, or more specifically, subband non-overlapping full duplex at the gNB side within a conventional TDD band.

The NR TDD specifications allow the dynamic/flexible allocation of downlink and uplink in time and CLI handling and RIM for NR were introduced in Rel-16. Nevertheless, further study may be required for CLI handling between the gNBs of the same or different operators to enable the dynamic/flexible TDD in commercial networks. The inter-gNB CLI may be due to either adjacent-channel CLI or co-channel-CLI, or both, depending on the deployment scenario. One of the problems not addressed in the previous releases is gNB-to-gNB CLI.

This study aims to identify the feasibility and solutions of duplex evolution in the areas outlined above to provide enhanced UL coverage, reduced latency, improved system capacity, and improved configuration flexibility for NR TDD operations in unpaired spectrum. In addition, the regulatory aspects need to be examined for deploying identified duplex enhancements in TDD unpaired spectrum considering potential constraints.

Samsung has a technical white paper on this topic which they refer to as XDD (Cross Division Duplex), available here. The abstract says:

XDD (Cross Division Duplex) is one of the key technologies that Samsung is proposing as part of Rel-18 NR (5G-Advanced) to address the coverage issue observed during the initial phase of 5G deployment. XDD provides improved coverage, capacity, and latency compared to conventional TDD. Instead of relying solely on orthogonal time resources for DL-UL separation as in TDD, XDD allows simultaneous DL-UL operation by using non-overlapping frequency resources within a carrier bandwidth.

This white paper provides a high level description of XDD concept, benefits, and implementation challenges. First, an overview of XDD including a comparison with conventional TDD and FDD is provided. Next, the implementation challenges of XDD especially at the base station to handle self-interference mitigation is provided. Furthermore, several features that we consider critical in realizing XDD in actual deployment scenarios are provided along with some performance results. Finally, Samsung’s view on XDD for the next phase of 5G (5G-Advanced) is provided.

An open access IEEE Access paper, 'Extending 5G TDD Coverage With XDD', written by Samsung researchers provides a much more detailed insight into this topic. The abstract says:

In this paper, an advanced duplex scheme called cross-division duplex (XDD) is proposed to enhance uplink (UL) coverage in time division duplex (TDD) carriers by utilizing self-interference cancellation (SIC) capability at a base station. With XDD, it is possible to combine TDD’s ability to efficiently handle asymmetric UL and downlink (DL) traffic with frequency division duplex’s coverage advantage. To do so, XDD simultaneously operates UL and DL on the same TDD carrier but on different frequency resources. Such operation leads to severe interference on the received UL signal at the base station which requires two levels of SIC implementation; antenna and digital SIC. More than 50 dB of interference is removed through the antenna SIC using electromagnetic barriers between the transmitting and receiving antennas. The remaining interference is removed by the digital SIC based on estimating the non-linear channel of the circuit at the receiver baseband. It is verified by simulation and analysis that with the proposed XDD, the UL coverage can be improved by up to 2.37 times that of TDD. To check the feasibility of XDD, a Proof-of-Concept was developed where it was observed that the benefits of XDD can indeed be realized using the proposed SIC techniques

In the segment of the video embedded below, Dr. Hyoung Ju Ji, Principal Engineer, Samsung Electronics, Korea explains how XDD is a Realistic Option for Full Duplex Realization.

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Tuesday 25 January 2022

3GPP Release-18 Work Moves Into Focus as Release-17 Reaches Maturity

In early December 2021, 3GPP reached a consensus on the scope of 5G NR Release-18. With the 3GPP Rel-17 functional freeze set for March 2022, Release-18 work is moving into focus. This is being billed as a significant milestone marking the beginning of 5G Advanced — the second wave of wireless innovations that will fulfil the 5G vision. Release 18 is expected to build on the solid foundation set by 3GPP Releases 15, 16, and 17, and it sets the longer-term evolution direction of 5G and beyond.

(click on the image to enlarge - PDF here)

The 3GPP Release-18 page has a concise summary of all that you need to know, including the timeline. For anyone interested in going through features one-by-one, start navigating from here, select Rel-18 from the top.

For others who may be more interested in summary rather than a lot of details, here are some good links to navigate:

  • Nokia whitepaper - 5G-Advanced: Expanding 5G for the connected world (link)
  • Paper by Ericsson researcher, Xingqin Lin, 'An Overview of 5G Advanced Evolution in 3GPP Release 18' (link)
  • Marcin Dryjański, Rimedo Labs - 3GPP Rel-18: 5G-Advanced RAN Features (link)
  • Bevin Fletcher, FierceWireless: Next 3GPP standard tees up 5G Advanced (link)

As always, Qualcomm has a fantastic summary of 5G evolution and features in 3GPP Release-18 on their page here. The image above nicely shows the evolution of 5G from Release-15 all the way to Release-18. The image below shows a summary of 3GPP Release-18, 5G-Advanced features.

They also hosted a webinar with RCR wireless. The webinar is embedded below.

The slides can be downloaded from GSA website (account required, free to register) here.

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Tuesday 23 November 2021

3GPP Presentations from CEATEC Japan 2021

3GPP and its Japanese Organizational Partners TTC (Telecommunication Technology Committee) and ARIB (Association of Radio Industries and Businesses) hosted a “3GPP Summit” online workshop at CEATEC 2021, back in October. The event was co-located with the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) and 5G Mobile Communications Promotion Forum (5GMF) 5G day at the event. Here is a summary of the event from 3GPP news:

The “3GPP Summit” featured all three Technical Specification Group (TSG) Chairs and one Japanese leader from each group. After the presentations, they exchanged their views and expectations for 3GPP work – as the industry starts to look at research beyond 5G. The event attracted almost 700 people, keen to understand what is going on in 3GPP.

The first session covered Release 17 and 18 evolution, with each TSG Chair and a domestic leader jointly presenting. Wanshi Chen introduced the latest schedule of each release and potential projects for Release 18 with the result of 3GPP Release 18 workshop held in June. Then, Hiroki Takeda presented some key features on Release 17 such as Redcap, RAN slicing and evolution of duplex.

TSG SA Chair, Georg Mayer introduced the group’s latest activities alongside Satoshi Nagata, covering key Release 17 features, such as enhanced support on Non-public Networks, Industrial IoT and Edge computing.

Next up was the TSG CT Chair, Lionel Morand, presenting the latest activities and roadmap for Core Network evolution from Release 15 to 17. Hiroshi Ishikawa also presented, covering 5G core protocol enhancements and some activities driven by operators.

The second part of the session focused more on activities ‘Beyond 5G’. First, Takaharu Nakamura introduced the latest activities on the topic in Japan. A panel discussion followed, with Satoshi Nagata joining the other 3GPP speakers, to give feedback on 5G developments and future use.

You can download the PPT of presentations from 3GPP site here or get the PDF from 3G4G page here.

Please feel free to add your thoughts as comments below.

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Tuesday 16 November 2021

5G-Advanced Flagship Features

I am starting to get a feeling that people may be becoming overwhelmed with all the new 5G features and standards update. That is why this presentation by Mikael Höök, Director Radio Research at Ericsson, at Brooklyn 6G Summit (B6GS) caught my attention. 

The talk discusses the network infrastructure progress made in the previous two years to better illustrate the advanced 5G timeline to discovering 6G requirements. At the end of the talk, there was a quick summary of the four flagship features that are shown in the picture above. The talk is embedded below, courtesy of IEEE TV

In addition to this talk, October 2021 issue of Ericsson Technology Review covers the topic "5G evolution toward 5G advanced: An overview of 3GPP releases 17 and 18". You can get the PDF here.

I have covered the basics of these flagship features in the following posts:

Please feel free to add your thoughts as comments below.

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Tuesday 26 October 2021

An Early View of 3GPP Release-18 5G-Advanced Topics

5G is hot at the moment. While the operators are busy rolling out the networks based on Release-15/16 features, 3GPP is working on finalising Release-17 specifications and laying the foundations for Rel-18.

The latest issue of 3GPP Highlights magazine (I prefer the PDF) contains a lot of valuable technical content, in addition to many other articles. The technical content includes:

  • An early view of the RAN Topics for 5G-Advanced
  • 5G Advanced in the Making – The TSG SA approach to Release 18
  • Application Enablement Standards in 3GPP – Maximizing the potential of 5G!
  • RAN3 flourishing in this time of change
  • Enhanced support of Industrial IoT in the 5G System (Rel-17)
  • Autonomous Network standardization in WG SA5
  • Rel-17 Edge Computing and Network Slicing charging (WG SA 5)
  • Media Production over 5G NPN

While I am not going into too much detail here, I want to highlight the 5G-Advanced topics that will be under discussion over the next couple of months. The final list will be approved by 3GPP TSGs SA, RAN and CT in December 2021.

Dr. Wanshi Chen, 3GPP TSG RAN Chair provided an early view of the RAN topics for 5G-Advanced. 

Topics Under Discussion

As well as taking a tentative decision on an 18-month duration for Release 18, the RAN workshop endorsed a list of topics for subsequent email discussions. Some of the topics in the following list also have a set of example areas, serving as a starting point for further refinement:

  • Evolution for downlink MIMO, with the following example areas:
    • Further enhancements for CSI (e.g., mobility, overhead, etc.)
    • Evolved handling of multi-TRP (Transmission Reception Points) and multi-beam
    • CPE (customer premises equipment) -specific considerations
  • Uplink enhancements, with the following example areas:
    • >4 Tx operation
    • Enhanced multi-panel/multi-TRP uplink operation
    • Frequency-selective precoding
    • Further coverage enhancements
  • Mobility enhancements, with the following example areas:
    • Layer 1/layer 2 based inter cell mobility
    • DAPS (Dual Active Protocol Stack)/CHO (Conditional HandOver) related improvements
    • FR2 (frequency range 2)-specific enhancements
  • Additional topological improvements (IAB and smart repeaters), with the following example areas:
    • Mobile IAB (Integrated Access Backhaul)/Vehicle mounted relay (VMR)
    • Smart repeater with side control information
  • Enhancements for XR (eXtended Reality), with the following example areas:
    • KPIs/QoS, application awareness operation, and aspects related to power consumption, coverage, capacity, and mobility
      • Note: only power consumption/coverage/mobility aspects specific to XR
  • Sidelink enhancements (excluding positioning), with the following example areas:
    • SL enhancements (e.g., unlicensed, power saving enhancements, efficiency enhancements, etc.)
    • SL relay enhancements
    • Co-existence of LTE V2X & NR V2X
  • RedCap evolution (excluding positioning), with the following example areas:
    • New use cases and new UE bandwidths (5MHz?)
    • Power saving enhancements
  • NTN (Non-Terrestrial Networks) evolution
    • Including both NR & IoT (Internet of Things) aspects
  • Evolution for broadcast and multicast services
    • Including both LTE based 5G broadcast and NR MBS (Multicast Broadcast Services)
  • Expanded and improved Positioning, with the following example areas:
    • Sidelink positioning/ranging
    • Improved accuracy, integrity, and power efficiency
    • RedCap positioning
  • Evolution of duplex operation, with the following example areas:
    • Deployment scenarios, including duplex mode (TDD only?)
    • Interference management
  • AI (Artificial Intelligence)/ML (Machine Learning), with the following example areas:
    • Air interface (e.g., Use cases to focus, KPIs and Evaluation methodology, network and UE involvement, etc.)
    • NG-RAN
  • Network energy savings, with the following example areas:
    • KPIs and evaluation methodology, focus areas and potential solutions
  • Additional RAN1/2/3 candidate topics, Set 1:
    • UE power savings
    • Enhancing and extending the support beyond 52.6GHz
    • CA (Carrier Aggregation)/DC (Dual-Connectivity) enhancements (e.g., MR-MC (Multi-Radio/Multi-Connectivity), etc.)
    • Flexible spectrum integration
    • RIS (Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces)
    • Others (RAN1-led)
  • Additional RAN1/2/3 candidate topics, Set 2:
    • UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle)
    • IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things)/URLLC (Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication)
    • <5MHz in dedicated spectrum
    • Other IoT enhancements/types
    • HAPS (High Altitude Platform System)
    • Network coding
  • Additional RAN1/2/3 candidate topics, Set 3:
    • Inter-gNB coordination, with the following example areas:
      • Inter-gNB/gNB-DU multi-carrier operation
      • Inter-gNB/gNB-DU multi-TRP operation
      • Enhancement for resiliency of gNB-CU
    • Network slicing enhancements
    • MUSIM (Multiple Universal Subscriber Identity Modules)
    • UE aggregation
    • Security enhancements
    • SON (Self-Organizing Networks)/MDT (Minimization of Drive Test)
    • Others (RAN2/3-led)
  • Potential RAN4 enhancements

Dr. Georg Mayer, 3GPP TSG SA Chair provides the TSG SA approach to 3GPP Release-18

The candidate items for Rel-18 include:

  • Immersive Media and Virtual/Artificial/Extended Reality (XR) Media support in Working Group (WG) SA4 and WG SA2.
  • New work areas for Internet of Things (e.g. passive IoT (WG SA2) and application capability exposure for IoT platforms (WG SA6)).
  • Proposals to for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Services Transport and Management (WGs SA2, SA5).
  • Concepts for integration and migration of existing vertical infrastructure, e.g. for railway networks (WG SA6).
  • Examples for proposed enhancements to existing 3GPP services and functionalities include:
    • Network Slicing (WGs SA2, SA5)
    • Edge Computing (WGs SA2, SA5, SA6)
    • Autonomous Networks (WG SA5)
    • Service Based Architecture (WGs SA2, SA5)
    • Northbound APIs (WG SA6)
    • Non-Public Networks (WG SA2)
    • Satellite 5G Networks (WG SA2)
    • Drone support (WG SA2)
    • 5G Multicast and Broadcast (WG SA2)
    • Location Services (WG SA2, SA6)
    • Management Data Analytics (WG SA5)
    • Mission Critical Services (WG SA6)

None of these features are final but we will know in the next few months what will be included as part of Rel-18 and what won't. In the meantime, do check out the latest issue of 3GPP Highlights here.

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Tuesday 24 August 2021

3GPP's 5G-Advanced Technology Evolution from a Network Perspective Whitepaper


China Mobile, along with a bunch of other organizations including China Unicom, China Telecom, CAICT, Huawei, Nokia, Ericsson, etc., produced a white paper on what technology evolutions will we see as part of 5G-Advanced. This comes not so long after the 3GPP 5G-Advanced Workshop which a blogged about here.

The abstract of the whitepaper says:

The commercialization of 5G networks is accelerating globally. From the perspective of industry development drivers, 5G communications are considered the key to personal consumption experience upgrades and digital industrial transformation. Major economies around the world require 5G to be an essential part of long-term industrial development. 5G will enter thousands of industries in terms of business, and technically, 5G needs to integrate DOICT (DT - Data Technology, OT - Operational Technology, IT - Information Technology and CT - Communication Technology) and other technologies further. Therefore, this white paper proposes that continuous research on the follow-up evolution of 5G networks—5G-Advanced is required, and full consideration of architecture evolution and function enhancement is needed.

This white paper first analyzes the network evolution architecture of 5G-Advanced and expounds on the technical development direction of 5G-Advanced from the three characteristics of Artificial Intelligence, Convergence, and Enablement. Artificial Intelligence represents network AI, including full use of machine learning, digital twins, recognition and intention network, which can enhance the capabilities of network's intelligent operation and maintenance. Convergence includes 5G and industry network convergence, home network convergence and space-air-ground network convergence, in order to realize the integration development. Enablement provides for the enhancement of 5G interactive communication and deterministic communication capabilities. It enhances existing technologies such as network slicing and positioning to better help the digital transformation of the industry.

The paper can be downloaded from China Mobile's website here or from Huawei's website here. A video of the paper launch is embedded below:

Nokia's Antti Toskala wrote a blog piece providing the first real glimpse of 5G-Advanced, here.

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Tuesday 17 August 2021

'5G RAN Release 18 for Industry Verticals' Webinar Highlights

5G PPP held a virtual workshop on RAN Release 18 for Industry Verticals on June 23rd, 2021. The workshop was organised by 3GPP Market Representation Partners (MRPs): 5G-IA, 5GAA, 5G-ACIA and PSCE.

It features a fireside chat with new 3GPP RAN TSG Chair, Wanshi Chen. In addition to this, the workshop then provides a deep dive on new requirements from verticals, spanning automotive (5GAA), manufacturing (5G-ACIA), critical communications and public safety (TCCA with PSCE), broadcasting and media (5G-MAG), satellite (ESOA), rail (UIC), maritime (IALA) and energy (EUTC).

5G-SOLUTIONS came on board as a 5G PPP project supporting verticals with the 5G-EVE and 5G-VINNI 5G network infrastructures alongside RAN specialists doing standardisation work applicable to multiple verticals.

The video of the webinar is embedded below. In addition, you will find timings of when a particular talk starts and a link to the slides (if shared/available)

Timings:

  • 0:04:21 Fireside chat with Wanshi Chen, Qualcomm and 3GPP RAN TSG Chairman
  • 0:21:00 NTN Requirements in Rel-18 by Nicolas Chuberre, Thales Alenia Space (slides)
  • 0:31:40 Multiple verticals: Andrea Di Giglio, 5G SOLUTIONS (slides)
  • 0:36:35 Media and Broadcasting: David Vargas, BBC and 5G-MAG Chair of CD-T WG, Proposals for 3GPP RAN Rel-18 (slides)
  • 0:43:19 Maritime: Hyounhee Koo, Synctechno and IALA, Maritime Requirements on 3GPP Rel 18 RAN Studies/Works Priorities (slides)
  • 0:46:12 Rail: Ingo Wendler, UIC, NR Narrowband Channel Bandwidth - Railway Use Case (slides)
  • 0:50:02 Utilities: Julian Stafford, EUTC 3GPP RAN Rel-18 Requirements (slides)
  • 0:58:35 Utilities: Erik Guttman, Samsung 5G Smart Energy Infrastructure (slides)
  • 1:05:45 Multiple verticals: Mathew Webb, Huawei and 3GPP RAN 3GPP Release 17 and Release 18 support for industry verticals (slides)
  • 1:15:19 Public Safety/Critical Communications: Tero Pesonen, TCCA Chair, joint presentation with PSCE, 3GPP MRP Mini Workshop: 3GPP Rel 18. Requirements from industry verticals (slides)
  • 1:20:15 Multiple verticals: Thierry Berisot, Novamint and 3GPP RAN, Industry Verticals and Rel-18 RAN (slides)
  • 1:32:56 Manufacturing/IIoT: Michael Bahr, Siemens and 5G-ACIA WG 1Chair and An Xueli, Huawei and 5G-ACIA WG1 Vice Chair 3GPP RAN Rel-18 for Industry Verticals (slides)
  • 1:42:20 Automotive: 5GAA Maxime Flament, CTO Input to RAN 18 Rel-18 Workshop (slides)
  • 1:53:35 Interactive Session 2
  • 2:04:36 Passive IoT for 5G-Advanced, Mathew Webb, Huawei and 3GPP RAN (slides)
  • 2:14:59 Template A for Interactive Session 2
  • 2:20:40 Critical Communications / Public Safety requirements for Release 18 
  • 2:26:00 Closing Remarks

Official page here.

The slide above nicely summarizes 3GPP RAN Verticals up to Release 17.

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Monday 2 August 2021

3GPP's 5G-Advanced Workshop Summary

From 28 June to 02 July 2 2021, 3GPP held its first internal workshop on the radio specific content of Release 18, reviewing over 500 company and partner organization’s presentations, to identify topics for the immediate and longer-term commercial needs for:

  • eMBB (evolved Mobile BroadBand);
  • Non-eMBB evolution;
  • Cross-functionalities for both eMBB and non-eMBB driven evolution.

All the documents related to the workshop can be found on the 3GPP website here. The workshop details is available in RWS-210002 while the summary of the RAN Rel-18 workshop is available in RWS-210659.

The following is from 3GPP's news article on 5G-Advanced workshop:

Wanshi Chen, the TSG RAN Chair, summarized that the example areas under each topic serve as a starting point, each subject to further update or removal during the email discussion period - with additional topics still possible, up to the September e-meeting. That RAN#93-e meeting (13-17 September 2021) will see progress on ‘high-level descriptions’ of the objectives for each topic.

List of Topics:

1. Evolution for downlink MIMO, with the following example areas:
  • Further enhancements for CSI (e.g., mobility, overhead, etc.)
  • Evolved handling of multi-TRP (Transmission Reception Points) and multi-beam
  • CPE(customer premises equipment)-specific considerations
2. Uplink enhancements, with the following example areas:
  • >4 Tx operation
  • Enhanced multi-panel/multi-TRP uplink operation
  • Frequency-selective precoding
  • Further coverage enhancements
3. Mobility enhancements, with the following example areas:
  • Layer 1/layer 2 based inter cell mobility
  • DAPS (Dual Active Protocol Stack)/CHO (Conditional HandOver) related improvements
  • FR2 (frequency range 2)-specific enhancements
4. Additional topological improvements (IAB and smart repeaters), with the following example areas:
  • Mobile IAB (Integrated Access Backhaul)/Vehicle mounted relay (VMR)
  • Smart repeater with side control information
5. Enhancements for XR (eXtended Reality), with the following example areas:
  • KPIs/QoS, application awareness operation, and aspects related to power consumption, coverage, capacity, and mobility (Note: only power consumption/coverage/mobility aspects specific to XR)
6. Sidelink enhancements (excluding positioning), with the following example areas:
  • SL enhancements (e.g., unlicensed, power saving enhancements, efficiency enhancements, etc.)
  • SL relay enhancements
  • Co-existence of LTE V2X & NR V2X
7. RedCap evolution (excluding positioning), with the following example areas:
  • New use cases and new UE bandwidths (5MHz?)
  • Power saving enhancements
8. NTN (Non-Terrestrial Networks) evolution
  • Including both NR & IoT (Internet of Things) aspects
9. Evolution for broadcast and multicast services
  • Including both LTE based 5G broadcast and NR MBS (Multicast Broadcast Services)
10. Expanded and improved Positioning, with the following example areas:
  • Sidelink positioning/ranging
  • Improved accuracy, integrity, and power efficiency
  • RedCap positioning
11. Evolution of duplex operation, with the following example areas:
  • Deployment scenarios, including duplex mode (TDD only?)
  • Interference management
12. AI (Artificial Intelligence)/ML (Machine Learning), with the following example areas:
  • Air interface (e.g., Use cases to focus, KPIs and Evaluation methodology, network and UE involvement, etc.)
  • NG-RAN
13. Network energy savings, with the following example areas:
  • KPIs and evaluation methodology, focus areas and potential solutions
14. Additional RAN1/2/3 candidate topics, Set 1:
  • UE power savings
  • Enhancing and extending the support beyond 52.6GHz
  • CA (Carrier Aggregation)/DC (Dual-Connectivity) enhancements (e.g., MR-MC (Multi-Radio/Multi-Connectivity), etc.)
  • Flexible spectrum integration
  • RIS (Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces)
  • Others (RAN1-led)
15. Additional RAN1/2/3 candidate topics, Set 2:
  • UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle)
  • IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things)/URLLC (Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication)
  • <5MHz in dedicated spectrum
  • Other IoT enhancements/types
  • HAPS (High Altitude Platform System)
  • Network coding
16. Additional RAN1/2/3 candidate topics, Set 3:
  • Inter-gNB coordination, with the following example areas:
  • Inter-gNB/gNB-DU multi-carrier operation
  • Inter-gNB/gNB-DU multi-TRP operation
  • Enhancement for resiliency of gNB-CU
  • Network slicing enhancements
  • MUSIM (Multiple Universal Subscriber Identity Modules)
  • UE aggregation
  • Security enhancements
  • SON (Self-Organizing Networks)/MDT (Minimization of Drive Test)
  • Others (RAN2/3-led)
17. Potential RAN4 enhancements 

The latest timeline for Release-17/18 is as shown in the diagram above. 

The official 3GPP Release-18 page is here. This link is better to navigate through features in different 3GPP releases.

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