Inside 3GPP Release-13 - Whitepaper by 5G Americas

The following is from the 5G Americas press release:

The summary offers insight to the future of wireless broadband and how new requirements and technological goals will be achieved. The report updates Release 13 (Rel-13) features that are now completed at 3GPP and were not available at the time of the publication of a detailed 5G Americas report, Mobile Broadband Evolution Towards 5G: 3GPP Release 12 & Release 13 and Beyond in June 2015.

The 3GPP standards have many innovations remaining for LTE to create a foundation for 5G.  Rel-12, which was finalized in December 2014, contains a vast array of features for both LTE and HSPA+ that bring greater efficiency for networks and devices, as well as enable new applications and services. Many of the Rel-12 features were extended into Rel-13.  Rel-13, functionally frozen in December 2015 and completed in March 2016, continues to build on these technical capabilities while adding many robust new features.

Jim Seymour, Principal Engineer, Mobility CTO Group, Cisco and co-leader of the 5G Americas report explained, “3GPP Release 13 is just a peek behind the curtain for the unveiling of future innovations for LTE that will parallel the technical work at 3GPP on 5G. Both LTE and 5G will work together to form our connected future.”

The numerous features in the Rel-13 standards include the following for LTE-Advanced:

• Active Antenna Systems (AAS), including beamforming, Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO) and Self-Organizing Network (SON) aspects
• Enhanced signaling to support inter-site Coordinated Multi-Point Transmission and Reception (CoMP)
• Carrier Aggregation (CA) enhancements to support up to 32 component carriers
• Dual Connectivity (DC) enhancements to better support multi-vendor deployments with improved traffic steering
• Improvements in Radio Access Network (RAN) sharing
• Enhancements to Machine Type Communication (MTC)
• Enhanced Proximity Services (ProSe)

Some of the standards work in Rel-13 related to spectrum efficiency include:                                                                                                                       

• Licensed Assisted Access for LTE (LAA) in which LTE can be deployed in unlicensed spectrum
• LTE Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) Aggregation (LWA) where Wi-Fi can now be supported by a radio bearer and aggregated with an LTE radio bearer
• Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) where lower power wider coverage LTE carriers have been designed to support IoT applications
• Downlink (DL) Multi-User Superposition Transmission (MUST) which is a new concept for transmitting more than one data layer to multiple users without time, frequency or spatial separation

“The vision for 5G is being clarified in each step of the 3GPP standards. To understand those steps, 5G Americas provides reports on the developments in this succinct, understandable format,” said Vicki Livingston, Head of Communications for the association.

The whitepaper as follows:

Related posts:

• Tweets from NGMN Industry Conference & Exhibition 2016
• 3GPP Release-13 whitepapers and presentations
• LTE-Advanced Pro (a.k.a. 4.5G)
• New whitepaper on Narrowband Internet of Things

Quick Summary of LTE Voice Summit 2015 (#LTEVoice)

Last year's summary of the LTE voice summit was very much appreciated so I have created one this year too.

The status of VoLTE can be very well summarised as can be seen in the image above.

‘VoLTE network deployment is the one of the most difficult project ever, the implementation complexity and workload is unparalleled in history’ - China Mobile group vice-president Mr.Liu Aili

Surprisingly, not many presentations were shared so I have gone back to the tweets and the pictures I took to compile this report. You may want to download the PDF from slideshare to be able to see the links. Hope you find it useful.

Related links:

• VoLTE Roaming with RAVEL (Roaming Architecture for Voice over IMS with Local Breakout)
• S8HR: Standardization of New VoLTE Roaming Architecture
• VoLTE Roaming: LBO, S8HR or HBO

WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) Updates

Its been a while since I last blogged about WebRTC. Things have been progressing as rather fast pace in this area.



WebRTC capabilities have quietly sneaked in our browsers. There is a debate about who would move to WebRTC before, Apple or Microssoft; Tsahi Levent-Levi makes his predictions here.



As per Light Reading, Japanese operator NTT has opened a WebRTC based chatroom recently.



The Korean operator SK Telecom as been showing off its WebRTC interworking with IMS platform.



The problem with WebRTC can be as seen in the slide above. Classic problem of what was promised and whats the reality.

There are 2 interesting presentations that I am embedding below that I found useful:

Additional Reading:

• Alan Quayle: IMS and WebRTC Workshop
• Disruptive Analysis WebRTC Market Status & Forecast Update - March 2014
• Snapchat made a secret acquisition to power its new video chat - Verge

What is WebRTC and where does it fit with LTE and IMS

This simple video from MWC should give an idea on what WebRTC is and can do:


So what exactly WebRTC is in technical terms. Here is a recent presentation from WebRTC Conference and Expo

WebRTC Technical Overview and Introduction from Zahid Ghadialy

And here is another presentation that explains where it fits in with the LTE Architecture.

Extending 4G Communications with WebRTC IMS and WebRTC from Zahid Ghadialy

Dean Bubley from Disruptive Analysis has writted extensively on this topic and his recent post "Is the telephony "threat" from VoIP & WebRTC about competition or contextualisation?" is an interesting read.

Iain Sharp from Netovate recently pointed out that 3GPP have 'nearly' approved a work item for WebRTC access to IMS.

It would be interesting to see how operators will view WebRTC. As an opportunity or as a threat. Please feel free to air your opinions via comments.