Tag: NR

3GPP Release-19 is the second release of the 5G-Advanced standard. Early workshops on this release were held in June 2023 discussing hundreds of submissions. The original assumption was that 3GPP Rel-19 would primarily focus on investing in the 5G-Advanced commercial deployments to further improve performance and address critical needs. In this post, we’re elaborating on the contents of the selected WIs and SIs to be incorporated within 3GPP Rel-19 as of December 2023.

The baseline 5G system was specified within 3GPP Releases 15 and 16, also known as 5G Phase-1 and 5G Phase 2. There are interesting developments within 3GPP, which evolved the system towards Rel-17. More recently, the standardization took the step towards a significant update with the so-called, “5G-Advanced” using Rel-18 for that purpose. This whitepaper provides an overview of the latest development steps along with outlining the main Work- and Study-Items of both 3GPP Rel-17 and Rel-18 within RAN and SA2 work groups.

This post presents a more detailed description of the sidelink radio interfaces proposed in LTE-V2X (Release 14/15) and its successor – NR-V2X. The focus will be mostly on the physical layer and radio resource allocation aspects, with some information on the synchronization possibilities and Quality-of-Service (QoS) management, also provided.

3GPP Rel-18 is the first release of the 5G-Advanced standard. On the 17th of December 2021, 3GPP TSG RAN plenary (3GPP RAN TSG #94e) approved 28 Release-18 projects (i.e., Study- and Work-Items, SI/WI) with the following split among RAN groups: 12 RAN1-led projects, 10 RAN2-led projects, 5 RAN3-led projects, and 1 RAN4-led project. Those topics include AI/ML for NR and NG-RAN, NTN and MIMO enhancements, evolution for sidelink, UAV, RedCap, SON, QoE, XR services, to name a few. In this post, we elaborate on each of the approved projects entering 5G-Advanced standardization.

RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) is to enable abstracting out part of functionality from the eNB or gNB that was traditionally hosted at the base station in the form of xApps or rApps in the O-RAN architecture. The functions, to which we relate here in the RAN domain include e.g., mobility management or interference management. The decisions are made in the xApps, and RIC then enforces policies towards the RAN elements and controls them using the open interface, namely E2. In this post, we elaborate on the RIC, its functional split, xApps, and rApps.

Like almost everything in Telecom's, Open RAN is complicated. It's not a single idea. It's not a single product or service. It's not an optimization technique or path towards improved efficiency. It’s hardly even an agreed term. Open RAN is essentially 2 foundational ideas: 1) The disaggregation of network functionality from the underlying hardware. 2) The specification of discrete functional blocks having well-defined interfaces. In other words, modularity.