Just in: 3GPP completes 5G NR Release 17

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Earlier this week, 3GPP Release 17 - the third installment of the global 5G standard - reached stage 3 functional freeze (translation: system design completion). Release 17 has been completed with its scope largely intact, despite the fact that the entire release was developed in the midst of a pandemic that hit the world, including 3GPP, right after the scope of the Release was approved in December 2019. 3GPP has been operating through electronic means from the latter part of January 2020 and has yet to get back to face-to-face meetings and interactions. The return to face-to-face meetings is not expected before June 2022. Release 17 completion not only marks the conclusion of the first phase of the 5G technology evolution, but it is a testament to the mobile ecosystem's resiliency and commitment to drive 5G forward. I couldn't be more proud of 3GPP, and our team, in particular, as Qualcomm Technologies led the efforts across a wide range of projects. Release 17 delivers another performance boost to the 5G system and continues expanding 5G into new devices, applications, and deployments. Let's take a closer look…

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New and enhanced 5G system capabilities

Release 17 brings further enhancements to the foundational aspects of the 5G system, pushing the technology boundaries on many fronts, including capacity, coverage, latency, power, mobility, and more. Here are a few key areas of improvement:

• Further enhanced massive MIMO: the Release 17 project focused on a few key areas of technology enhancements, including enhancements to multi-TRP (transmission and reception points) and multi-beam operations, as well as improvements in SRS (sounding reference signals) triggering/switching and CSI (channel state information) measurement/reporting.
• Coverage enhancements: targeting diverse deployments in sub-7 GHz, mmWave, and non-terrestrial networks, Release 17 introduced various enhancements to the uplink control and data channel design, such as increased repetitions for improved reliability and joint channel estimation across multiple transmissions and frequency hopping.
• Device power savings: to further extend battery life for mobile devices, Release 17 is bringing power saving enhancements for both idle/inactive and connected operation modes. For example, it supports new techniques to reduce unnecessary device paging receptions, relaxation of device measurement for radio link, and more.
• Spectrum expansion: an important Release 17 project is to scale the existing 5G NR design to expand mmWave spectrum range from 24.25-52.6 GHz up to 71 GHz, also known as FR2-2 band in 3GPP. It includes the support for the global 60 GHz unlicensed band, which can open doors to new use cases and deployments.
• Enhanced IAB and simple repeaters: for more efficient 5G deployments, especially with mmWave, Release 17 enhanced IAB (integrated access/backhaul) to support simultaneous Tx and Rx (i.e., spatially separated full duplex), and introduced a simple repeater (i.e., amplify and forward relay), a new cost-efficient infrastructure option to expand coverage in FDD and TDD networks.
• Further enhanced URLLC, private networks, and more: Release 17 continues to drive better support for stringent applications (e.g., IIoT), with new enhancements to URLLC (ultra-reliable, low-latency communication) such as improved physical layer feedback, compatibility for unlicensed spectrum, intra-device multiplexing and prioritization, and more.

Expansion to new 5G devices and applications

Release 17 takes another step toward the 5G vision of connecting virtually everything around us. Here are a few key Release 17 projects that focus on delivering system optimizations for a broad range of devices and applications:

• Reduced capability ("RedCap" or "NR-Light") devices: to efficiently support lower complexity IoT devices (e.g., sensors, wearables, video cameras), Release 17 scales down wideband 5G NR design (i.e., 100 MHz bandwidth) to 20 MHz/100 MHz in sub-7/mmWave. It also reduces the number of receive antennas required at the device for regular 5G NR from four in most of the new sub-7 bands (i.e., n77/n78/n79, n41, etc.) to one or two in NR-Light. This project also enables further energy savings and coexistence with other 5G NR devices.
• Non-terrestrial networks (NTN): following the Release 16 study, Release 17 introduced 5G NR support for satellite communications. It includes two distinct projects, one focusing on satellite backhaul communications for CPEs and direct low data rate services for handhelds, and a second project adapting eMTC/NB-IoT operation to satellite communications.
• Sidelink expansion: building on the 5G PC5 design from C-V2X (cellular vehicle-to-everything) of Release 16, Release 17 brings a slew of new and enhanced sidelink capabilities, such as optimized resource allocation, power savings, and new frequency band support. It also expands sidelink to new use cases such as public safety, IoT, and others by way of introducing sidelink relaying operation.
• Enhanced precise positioning: Release 17 further improves 5G positioning to meet more stringent use case requirements such as centimeter-level accuracy. Additional enhancements are also part of the project, including positioning latency reduction, improved positioning efficiency for increased capacity, and better GNSS-assisted positioning performance.
• Broadcast/multicast expansion: Release 17 project scope includes standalone broadcast enhancements and mixed-mode multicast support. For instance, introducing the support of 6/7/8 MHz carrier bandwidths for standalone broadcast, and defining multicast operations for 5G NR with simultaneous/dynamic switching between broadcast and unicast transmissions.
• Boundless XR (extended reality): the metaverse is an ever-present spatial internet complete with personalized digital experiences that spans the physical and virtual worlds. The Release 17 project on XR focused on studying and characterizing various types of XR traffic (AR, VR, cloud gaming). The study defines requirements and evaluation methodology for the identified XR traffic types, and provides performance evaluations used toward the identification of areas of improvement for a future Release 18 project.

Other enhancements

In addition to the main Release 17 projects outlined above, there are many smaller 5G system enhancement projects, including improvements to multi-radio dual connectivity, multi-SIM support, higher-order modulation, small data transmission, quality of experience, data collection, RAN slicing, and more.

What's next?

While it'll take another three months to reach the next milestone, ASN.1 freeze (translation: protocol freeze enabling implementations), for Release 17, we are about to start working on 3GPP Release 18. Release 18 is the inaugural standard release for 5G Advanced that will set off a new wave of wireless innovations and is expected to deliver on the 5G vision. At the same time, the 5G ecosystem is rapidly proliferating 5G networks globally and starting to commercialize Release 16 features, with Release 17 following in the near future. There is a lot of work ahead of us and I am extremely excited about the new technologies that will lead us on the path to the 6G future. For now, I will leave you with the good news and stay tuned for another update soon.

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More information

Join my Fierce Wireless webinar on 3/24 (or watch the recording) and download the presentation to learn more about 5G NR Release 17. To learn more about inventions from Qualcomm Technologies, visit our 5G technology website.

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