Showing posts with label Release 18. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Release 18. Show all posts

Wednesday, 14 August 2024

3GPP Release 18 Description and Summary of Work Items

The first official release of 3GPP TR 21.918: "Release 18 Description; Summary of Rel-18 Work Items" has been published. It's the first official version of 5G-Advanced. Quoting from the report: 

Release 18 specifies further improvements of the 5G-Avanced system. 

These improvements consist both in enhancements of concepts/Features introduced in the previous Releases and in the introduction of new topics.

Some of the key improvements are:

  • a further integration of the Satellite (NTN) access (introduced in Rel-17) in the 5G System (5GS), 
  • a more efficient support of Internet of Things (IoT), Machine-Type Communication (MTC), including by satellite coverage
  • and also several aspects of proximity communication and location (Sidelink, Proximity, Location and Positioning, better support of the industrial needs (Verticals, Industries, Factories, Northbound API), Multicast and Broadcast Services (MBS), Network Slicing or Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAV).

As for the new topics, some of the key aspects are:

  • Energy Efficiency (EE)
  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning (ML)
  • eXtended, Augmented and Virtual Reality (XR, AR, VR), immersive communications

The following list is from the v1.0.0 table of contents to make it easier to find the list of topics. If it interests you, download the latest version technical report from the directory here.

5 Satellite / Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN)
5.1 General aspects
5.1.1 User plane: “5G system with satellite backhaul”
5.1.2 Discontinuous coverage: “Satellite access Phase 2”
5.1.3 Radio: "NR NTN enhancements"
5.1.4 Charging and Management aspects of Satelite
5.2 Specific aspects
5.2.1 IoT (Internet of Things) NTN enhancements
5.2.2 Guidelines for Extra-territorial 5G Systems
5.2.3 5G system with satellite access to Support Control and/or Video Surveillance
5.2.4 Introduction of the satellite L-/S-band for NR
5.2.5 Other band-related aspects of satellite

6 Internet of Things (IoT), Machine-Type Communication (MTC)
6.1 Personal IoT and Residential networks
6.2 Enhanced support of Reduced Capability (RedCap) NR devices
6.3 NR RedCap UE with long eDRX for RRC_INACTIVE State
6.4 Application layer support for Personal IoT Network
6.5 5G Timing Resiliency System
6.6 Mobile Terminated-Small Data Transmission (MT-SDT) for NR
6.7 Adding new NR FDD bands for RedCap in Rel-18
6.8 Signal level Enhanced Network Selection
6.9 IoT NTN enhancements

7 Energy Efficiency (EE)
7.1 Enhancements of EE for 5G Phase 2
7.2 Network energy savings for NR
7.3 Smart Energy and Infrastructure

8 Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAV), UAS, UAM
8.1 Architecture for UAV and UAM Phase 2
8.2 Architecture for UAS Applications, Phase 2
8.3 NR support for UAV
8.4 Enhanced LTE Support for UAV

9 Sidelink, Proximity, Location and Positioning
9.1 5GC LoCation Services - Phase 3
9.2 Expanded and improved NR positioning
9.3 NR sidelink evolution
9.4 NR sidelink relay enhancements
9.5 Proximity-based Services in 5GS Phase 2
9.6 Ranging-based Service and sidelink positioning
9.7 Mobile Terminated-Small Data Transmission (MT-SDT) for NR
9.8 5G-enabled fused location service capability exposure

10 Verticals, Industries, Factories, Northbound API
10.1 Low Power High Accuracy Positioning for industrial IoT scenarios
10.2 Application enablement aspects for subscriber-aware northbound API access
10.3 Smart Energy and Infrastructure
10.4 Generic group management, exposure and communication enhancements
10.5 Service Enabler Architecture Layer for Verticals Phase 3
10.6 SEAL data delivery enabler for vertical applications
10.7 Rel-18 Enhancements of 3GPP Northbound and Application Layer interfaces and APIs
10.8 Charging Aspects of B2B
10.9 NRF API enhancements to avoid signalling and storing of redundant data
10.10 GBA_U Based APIs
10.11 Other aspects

11 Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning (ML)
11.1 AI/ML model transfer in 5GS
11.2 AI/ML for NG-RAN
11.3 AI/ML management & charging
11.4 NEF Charging enhancement to support AI/ML in 5GS

12 Multicast and Broadcast Services (MBS)
12.1 5G MBS Phase 2
12.2 Enhancements of NR MBS
12.3 UE pre-configuration for 5MBS
12.4 Other MBS aspects

13 Network Slicing
13.1 Network Slicing Phase 3
13.2 Enhancement of NSAC for maximum number of UEs with at least one PDU session/PDN connection
13.3 Enhancement of Network Slicing UICC application for network slice-specific authentication and authorization
13.4 Charging Aspects of Network Slicing Phase 2
13.5 Charging Aspects for NSSAA
13.6 Charging enhancement for Network Slice based wholesale in roaming
13.7 Network Slice Capability Exposure for Application Layer Enablement
13.8 Other slice aspects

14 eXtended, Augmented and Virtual Reality (XR, AR, VR), immersive
14.1 XR (eXtended Reality) enhancements for NR
14.2 Media Capabilities for Augmented Reality
14.3 Real-time Transport Protocol Configurations
14.4 Immersive Audio for Split Rendering Scenarios  (ISAR)
14.5 Immersive Real-time Communication for WebRTC
14.6 IMS-based AR Conversational Services
14.7 Split Rendering Media Service Enabler
14.8 Extended Reality and Media service (XRM)
14.9 Other XR/AR/VR items

15 Mission Critical and emergencies
15.1 Enhanced Mission Critical Push-to-talk architecture phase 4
15.2 Gateway UE function for Mission Critical Communication
15.3 Mission Critical Services over 5MBS
15.4 Mission Critical Services over 5GProSe
15.5 Mission Critical ad hoc group Communications
15.6 Other Mission Critical aspects

16 Transportations (Railways, V2X, aerial)
16.1 MBS support for V2X services
16.2 Air-to-ground network for NR
16.4 Interconnection and Migration Aspects for Railways
16.5 Application layer support for V2X services; Phase 3
16.6 Enhanced NR support for high speed train scenario in frequency range 2 (FR2)

17 User Plane traffic and services
17.1 Enhanced Multiparty RTT
17.2 5G-Advanced media profiles for messaging services
17.3 Charging Aspects of IMS Data Channel
17.4 Evolution of IMS Multimedia Telephony Service
17.5 Access Traffic Steering, Switch and Splitting support in the 5G system architecture; Phase 3
17.6 UPF enhancement for Exposure and SBA
17.7 Tactile and multi-modality communication services
17.8 UE Testing Phase 2
17.9 5G Media Streaming Protocols Phase 2
17.10 EVS Codec Extension for Immersive Voice and Audio Services
17.11 Other User Plane traffic and services items

18 Edge computing
18.1 Edge Computing Phase 2
18.2 Architecture for enabling Edge Applications Phase 2
18.3 Edge Application Standards in 3GPP and alignment with External Organizations

19 Non-Public Networks
19.1 Non-Public Networks Phase 2
19.2 5G Networks Providing Access to Localized Services
19.3 Non-Public Networks Phase 2

20 AM and UE Policy
20.1 5G AM Policy
20.2 Enhancement of 5G UE Policy
20.3 Dynamically Changing AM Policies in the 5GC Phase 2
20.4 Spending Limits for AM and UE Policies in the 5GC
20.5 Rel-18 Enhancements of UE Policy

21 Service-based items
21.1 Enhancements on Service-based support for SMS in 5GC
21.2 Service based management architecture
21.3 Automated certificate management in SBA
21.4 Security Aspects of the 5G Service Based Architecture Phase 2
21.5 Service Based Interface Protocol Improvements Release 18

22 Security-centric aspects
22.1 IETF DTLS protocol profile for AKMA and GBA
22.2 IETF OSCORE protocol profiles for GBA and AKMA
22.3 Home network triggered primary authentication
22.4 AKMA phase 2
22.5 5G Security Assurance Specification (SCAS) for the Policy Control Function (PCF)
22.6 Security aspects on User Consent for 3GPP services Phase 2
22.7 SCAS for split-gNB product classes
22.8 Security Assurance Specification for AKMA Anchor Function Function (AAnF)
22.9 Other security-centric items

23 NR-only items
23.1 Not band-centric
23.1.1 NR network-controlled repeaters
23.1.2 Enhancement of MIMO OTA requirement for NR UEs
23.1.3 NR MIMO evolution for downlink and uplink
23.1.4 Further NR mobility enhancements
23.1.5 In-Device Co-existence (IDC) enhancements for NR and MR-DC
23.1.6 Even Further RRM enhancement for NR and MR-DC
23.1.7 Dual Transmission Reception (TxRx) Multi-SIM for NR
23.1.8 NR support for dedicated spectrum less than 5MHz for FR1
23.1.9 Enhancement of NR Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS)
23.1.10 Multi-carrier enhancements for NR
23.1.11 NR RF requirements enhancement for frequency range 2 (FR2), Phase 3
23.1.12 Requirement for NR frequency range 2 (FR2) multi-Rx chain DL reception
23.1.13 Support of intra-band non-collocated EN-DC/NR-CA deployment
23.1.14 Further enhancements on NR and MR-DC measurement gaps and measurements without gaps
23.1.15 Further RF requirements enhancement for NR and EN-DC in frequency range 1 (FR1)
23.1.16 Other non-band related items
23.2 Band-centric
23.2.1 Enhancements of NR shared spectrum bands
23.2.2 Addition of FDD NR bands using the uplink from n28 and the downlink of n75 and n76
23.2.3 Complete the specification support for BandWidth Part operation without restriction in NR
23.2.4 Other NR band related topics

24 LTE-only items
24.1 High Power UE (Power Class 2) for LTE FDD Band 14
24.2 Other LTE-only items

25 NR and LTE items
25.1 4Rx handheld UE for low NR bands (<1GHz) and/or 3Tx for NR inter-band UL Carrier Aggregation (CA) and EN-DC
25.2 Enhancement of UE TRP and TRS requirements and test methodologies for FR1 (NR SA and EN-DC)
25.3 Other items

26 Network automation
26.1 Enablers for Network Automation for 5G phase 3
26.2 Enhancement of Network Automation Enablers

27 Other aspects
27.1 Support for Wireless and Wireline Convergence Phase 2
27.2 Secondary DN Authentication and authorization in EPC IWK cases
27.3 Mobile IAB (Integrated Access and Backhaul) for NR
27.4 Further NR coverage enhancements
27.5 NR demodulation performance evolution
27.6 NR channel raster enhancement
27.7 BS/UE EMC enhancements for NR and LTE
27.8 Enhancement on NR QoE management and optimizations for diverse services
27.9 Additional NRM features phase 2
27.10 Further enhancement of data collection for SON (Self-Organising Networks)/MDT (Minimization of Drive Tests) in NR and EN-DC
27.11 Self-Configuration of RAN Network Entities
27.12 Enhancement of Shared Data ID and Handling
27.13 Message Service within the 5G system Phase 2
27.14 Security Assurance Specification (SCAS) Phase 2
27.15 Vehicle-Mounted Relays
27.16 SECAM and SCAS for 3GPP virtualized network products
27.17 SECAM and SCAS for 3GPP virtualized network products
27.18 MPS for Supplementary Services
27.19 Rel-18 enhancements of session management policy control
27.20 Seamless UE context recovery
27.21 Extensions to the TSC Framework to support DetNet
27.22 Multiple location report for MT-LR Immediate Location Request for regulatory services
27.23 Enhancement of Application Detection Event Exposure
27.24 General Support of IPv6 Prefix Delegation in 5GS
27.25 5G Timing Resiliency System
27.26 MPS when access to EPC/5GC is WLAN
27.27 Data Integrity in 5GS
27.28 Security Enhancement on RRCResumeRequest Message Protection

28 Administration, Operation, Maintenance and Charging-centric Features
28.1 Introduction
28.2 Intent driven Management Service for Mobile Network phase 2
28.3 Management of cloud-native Virtualized Network Functions
28.4 Management of Trace/MDT phase 2
28.5 Security Assurance Specification for Management Function (MnF)
28.6 5G performance measurements and KPIs phase 3
28.7 Access control for management service
28.8 Management Aspects related to NWDAF
28.9 Management Aspect of 5GLAN
28.10 Charging Aspects of TSN
28.11 CHF Distributed Availability
28.12 Management Data Analytics phase 2
28.12 5G System Enabler for Service Function Chaining
28.13 Other Management-centric items

29 Other Rel-18 Topics

If you find them useful then please get the latest document from here.

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Wednesday, 24 January 2024

UE Assistance Information in LTE and 5G

I have been asked about the UE Assistance Information (UAI) RRC message a few times before. Generally I have always pointed people back to the LTE/5G specifications but here is a concise video that the telecoms technology training company Mpirical have shared recently:

If you want to dig further into details then please see the RRC specifications: 36.331 for LTE and 38.331 for 5G. 

Over the years I have added quite a few short tutorials from Mpirical on this blog, do check them out 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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Wednesday, 4 May 2022

ATIS Webinar on '5G Standards Development Update in 3GPP Release 17 and 18'

Our blog post on ATIS Release-16 webinar has been one of the popular posts so it's no brainer that people will surely find this Release 17/18 update useful as well. 

The moderator for this webinar was Iain Sharp, Principal Technologist at ATIS. The following were the speakers and the topics they spoke on:

  • Services: Greg Schumacher, Global Standards, T-Mobile USA
  • Systems Architecture and Core Networks: Puneet Jain, Principal Engineer and Director of Technical Standards at Intel Corporation, and 3GPP SA2 Chairman
  • Radio Access Network: Wanshi Chen, Senior Director,Technology at Qualcomm, and 3GPP RAN Chairman

Here is a summary of the webinar:

In Release 17, 3GPP delivered important updates to 5G specifications to broaden their range of commercial applications and improve the efficiency of networks. 3GPP is now starting standardization of Release 18. This webinar provides an up-to-date view of the completed 3GPP Release 17 work with a particular focus on how the work is expanding capabilities of 5G and enhancing the technical performance of the mobile system.

The webinar will cover:

  • The status of 3GPP's work and the organization's roadmap for the future
  • The main themes the delivered Release 17 features in 3GPP specifications
  • How enhancements to 5G are helping the 5G market proposition (e.g., through new service opportunities, or enhanced efficiency of 5G networks)

The webinar will give a technical overview of 3GPP's Release 17 content and its benefits to 5G networks. It is suitable for people in technical roles and technical executives who want to understand the current state of 5G standardization.

The video is embedded below and the slides are available here:

Glad to see that 3GPP Rel-19 work has already started as can be seen in the roadmap below.

(click to enlarge)

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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, 18 January 2022

3GPP 5G Non Terrestrial Networks (NTN) Standardization Update

We have looked at 5G Non Terrestrial Networks (NTN) in many different posts in our blogs. If you are new to this topic then this tutorial with a video is a good place to start or just follow this IEEE Comsoc article or this short update from R&S here.

Nicolas Chuberre is the rapporteur of the NR_NTN_solutions work item (TSG RAN) and of the FS-5GET study item (WG SA1) from Thales Alenia Space. In the October 2021 issue of 3GPP Highlights newsletter, he along with Munira Jaffar, Lead delegate representing EchoStar and Hughes Standards in ESOA (EMEA Satellite Operators Association) Standards Working Group, wrote a summary of 'Status of NTN & Satellite in 3GPP Releases 17 & 18'.

Quoting from the article:

The approval of normative activities on Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) in Rel-17 has generated growing interest in the topic. The Rel-17 NTN work items are supported by a wide range of vendors (terminal, chipset, network), as well as service providers from both the mobile and space industries and vertical user groups including ESOA.

The Rel-17 NTN and satellite work items in Technical Specification Group (TSG) RAN and TSG SA have been progressing towards the goal of satellite inclusion in 3GPP technical specifications. The focus is on transparent payload architecture with FDD systems where all UEs are assumed to have GNSS capabilities. The normative phase includes adaptation to the physical & access layer aspects, radio access network and system architecture, radio resource management, and RF requirements for targeted satellite networks operating at LEO, MEO or GEO orbits.

With an expected completion date of March 2022, the 3GPP Rel-17 specifications will support New Radio (NR) based satellite access deployed in FR1 bands serving handheld devices for global service continuity. Equally exciting, the 3GPP Rel-17 specification will support NB-IoT and eMTC based satellite access to address massive Internet of Things (IoT) use cases in areas such as agriculture, transport, logistics and many more. 

This joint effort between mobile and satellite industries will enable the full integration of satellite in the 3GPP ecosystem and define a global standard for future satellite networks. This will address the challenges of reachability and service continuity in unserved/underserved areas, enhance reliability through connectivity between various access technologies, and improve network resilience and dependability in responding to natural and manmade disasters.

Upon completion of Rel-17 the long-awaited standard for satellite networks serving handheld devices should be in place by 2022, with commercial product availability expected sometime in 2024. Including satellite as part of the 3GPP specifications will support the promise of worldwide access to 5G services and drive explosive growth in the satellite industry. 

Looking ahead, ESOA members and other NTN stakeholders have started discussions during the 3GPP Rel-18 June workshop and are continuing to work on a further list of enhancements for both NR-NTN and IoT-NTN to be considered in Rel-18. Plans are also underway to further define the enablers for NR based satellite access in bands above 10 GHz to serve fixed and moving platforms (e.g., aircraft, vessels, UAVs) as well as building- mounted devices (e.g., businesses and premises). The goal of these efforts is to further optimize satellite access performance, address new bands with their specific regulatory requirements, and support new capabilities and services as the evolution of 5G continues.

At Mobile Korea 2021, Nicolas Chuberre gave a talk on '3GPP NTN standardization: past, current and future'. The talk nicely summarizes Release-17 progress and the features planned for 3GPP Release-18. His talk is embedded below:

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Tuesday, 30 November 2021

Will Wi-Fi Help 3GPP Bring Reliable Connectivity Indoors?

I have argued a few times now that it would make much more sense to be able to make access and core independent of each other. 3GPP 5G Standards already have a feature available from Release-16 onwards that enables this with 5G Core, Standalone networks.

We use our smart devices currently for voice and data communications. When we are indoor, many times the data goes over Wi-Fi. This is what tempted operators to move to WiFi for voice solution as well. Many operators are now enabling Voice of WiFi in their network to provide reliable voice coverage indoors.

While this works currently without any issues, when operators start offering new native services and applications, like XR over 5G, the current approach won't help. When our devices are connected over Wi-Fi at present, they are unable to take advantage of operator core or services. With access and core independence, this will no longer be an issue.

I gave a short (15 mins) virtual presentation at 5G Techritory this year. I argued not just for WWC but also looked at what 5G features have a potential for revolution. It's embedded below.

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