3GPP Plenary 85: September 2019
This report summarises updates from 3GPP Plenary #85 in Newport Beach (CA), U.S. from Hans van der Veen NEC Labs Europe and member of the 5G Infrastructure Association Pre-Standardization Working Group.
Rel-15
Rel-15 is complete, with one outstanding issue in RAN, namely the handling of Synchronous NR-NR DC, which was a late addition to the "late drop" one year ago (September 2018).
Rel-15 TR 21.915 on Rel-15 Summary (RP-192207)
This Summary of Rel-15 Features and individual Work Items was approved and put under change control by SA#85.
Rel-15 Synchronous NR-NR DC (WF: RP-192345)
The issue is that when this work was approved a year ago, it was not made clear what needs to be "synchronous". Way Forward: Introduce Rel-15 UE capability for SFN-sync as backward compatible CR based on June specification. Rel-16 UEs will not be allowed to use the bit defined in Rel-15. Revisit the issue of mandating Release-15 UEs supporting NR-NR DC to support slot aligned non-SFN-sync DC in RAN#87 (March/2020). Rel-16 NR-NR DC scope remains unchanged.
Rel-16
The main discussions on Rel-16 were about downscoping ongoing work. No new work was approved (except a study in RAN4).
Rel-16 Planning (aka 5G Phase 2) (changed)
Stage 1: frozen December 2018 without exceptions.
Stage 2: frozen June 2019 with exceptions (5 SA2 items still open in September 2019: Vertical LAN, eV2X, CIoT, eNA, IAB)
Stage 3: freezing target March 2020. (ASN.1 freeze planned for June 2020 (tentative)).
Rel-16 NR URLLC and IIoT scoping (WF: RP-192287; Revised WID: RP-192324)
Ethernet header compression: Add impacted LTE specs, LTE work to start once NR principles are clear. UE based enhancements for more resource efficient PDCP duplication by enhancing PDCP duplication activation/deactivation mechanism is lower priority until RAN#86. Intra-UE prioritization & multiplexing: Continue work in RAN1 and RAN2, however with the limitation that RAN1 would not consider L1 multiplexing of different services in Release 16.
Rel-16 NR MIMO enhancements (RAN4 LS: RP-191660; Revised WID: RP-192271; Revised RF FR2 WID: RP-192227)
RAN4 believes there is an issue on multi panel operation, but RAN1 has no time to handle it in MIMO. The revised MIMO WID removes multi panel operation from MIMO but discussion between RAN4 and RAN1 is expected to continue as reflected in the RF FR2 WID.
Rel-16 NR UE power saving (WF: RP-192326)
Dormancy and the power saving mechanism are combined. RAN2 will define dormancy behaviour under the MR-DC/CA Work Item while RAN1 will specify L1-based mechanisms for transitioning between 'dormancy-like' and 'non-dormancy-like' behaviour on activated SCells.
Rel-16 NR 2-step RACH (Revised WID: RP-192330)
As a compromise, RAN2 will specify Contention-Free 2-step RACH procedure but RAN1 work will address only Contention-Based RACH procedure.
Rel-16 NR MR-DC/CA (Revised WID: RP-192336)
The revised WID adds objectives to introduce support for aperiodic CSI-RS triggering with different numerology between CSI-RS and triggering PDCCH (the topic voted out of Rel-15 at RAN#84) and to introduce support for unaligned frame boundary with slot alignment and partial SFN alignment for Rel-16 NR inter-band CA.
Rel-16 New NR WIs/SIs (excluding spectrum-related and conformance testing)
- RP-192322 SI: Study on enhanced test methods for FR2 UEs (RAN4)
Keywords: FR2 RF testing methodology for high power and low power UE; minimize impact of polarization basis mismatch between the TE and DUT; study inter-band (FR2+FR2) CA; testing under extreme temperature conditions
Rel-17
There was a joint RAN/SA/CT session to share progress on the definition of Rel-17 content and discuss cross-TSG areas.
- In RAN, there had been discussions on the email reflector since the previous meeting, the summaries of which were presented and discussed with SA/CT.
- RAN will continue the email discussions, and start new ones on 3GPP_TSG_RAN_DRAFTS, for which the scope was presented and discussed. These email discussions will run until the December meetings. The documents showing summaries and/or scopes for further discussion are listed below.
- The decision making on content for Rel-17 is planned for December 2019, so the September meeting reflected an 'intermediate' status. In other words, the documents help to get a sense of the direction in which discussions are moving, but things can still change.
- SA#85 made some agreements on Rel-17 content and prioritization (SP-190949) and, similar to RAN, agreed on a moderated email discussion (SP-190950) on a new mailing list, 3GPP_TSG_SA_DRAFTS.
- Subscription links:
https://list.etsi.org/scripts/wa.exe?A0=3GPP_TSG_RAN_DRAFTS
https://list.etsi.org/scripts/wa.exe?A0=3GPP_TSG_SA_DRAFTS
Rel-17 Planning (no change)
RAN Workshop on Rel-17 proposals: June 2019
RAN-SA-CT joint meeting on Rel-17 content and cross-TSG areas: September 2019 (see details below)
Stage 1: freezing target December 2019
"Feature Packaging" ("Content definition") and definition of "inter-TSG coordination areas": December 2019
Stage 2: freezing target September 2020 (tentative; to be confirmed in December 2019)
Stage 3: freezing target June 2021 (tentative; to be confirmed in December 2019)
(ASN.1 freeze planned for September 2021 (tentative)).
Rel-17 SA/CT and RAN coordination documents (inputs from SA/CT side)
These documents show SA/CT work that may impact RAN.
- RP-192294: TSG SA Report to TSG RAN (includes areas identified for coordination)
- RP-192212: Release 17 RAN Work areas and SA1 related items
- RP-192213: SA2 R17 Requirements with foreseeable RAN Impact
- RP-192161: SA3 related work in RAN in Rel-17
- RP-192295: SA5 work areas with potential RAN impact Operation, Administration, Maintenance & Provisioning (OAM&P) Charging Management (CH)
- RP-191668: LS on aspects of Mission Critical Services over 5MBS (S6-192003)
- RP-192134: Impacts on RAN from NPN in SA
- RP-192171: Extended Reality (XR) work in TSG SA
Rel-17 RAN topics with possible SA/CT impact (email discussions)
Only the email discussion results and proposals for email discussion in the next quarter were reviewed, and ways forward identified. All these documents are 'noted':
- RP-191840: Small data enhancements for NR
- RP-192296: Sidelink enhancements
- RP-192297: Multi-SIM
- RP-191859: NR multicast broadcast
- RP-191886: NR coverage enhancement
- RP-192291: NB-IoT and LTE-MTC
Network power saving was split off and will be moderated separately
- RP-192300: Scope of email discussion for NR URLLC and IIOT
- RP-192069: UE Power Saving Enhancements
- RP-191738: Positioning enhancements
- RP-191865: IAB email discussion outline
- RP-192248: Email discussion NWI NTN scoping
- RP-191786: Potential SA impacts of RAN data collection enhancements
- RP-192327: Proposals on slicing
- RP-192155: NR UAV
- RP-192303: XR & 5G
- RP-192205: 5G Audio-Visual (AV) Production Possibilities
- RP-192108: RAN Enhancements for Localized User Plane
Rel-17 RAN-internal topics (email discussions)
Similar as for the SA-related documents, only the email discussion results and proposals for email discussion in the next quarter were reviewed, and ways forward identified. All these documents are 'noted':
- RP-191840: Small data enhancements for NR
- RP-192296: Sidelink enhancements
- RP-192160: NR Light
- RP-191914: NR above 52.6GHz
- RP-192318: Email discussion template for Rel.17 NR MIMO
- RP-192334: Scope of NR-U Enhancements email discussion
- RP-192340: MR-DC enhancements
- RP-192199: Flexible UL/DL resource utilization
- RP-192014: NR QoE
- RP-192060: DSS
- RP-192138: DL 1024QAM in FR1
Rel-17 SA topics
SA#85 made some agreements on Rel-17 content and prioritization and similar to RAN agreed on a moderated email discussion to run until December 2019.
- SP-190949: TSG SA#85 Agreements on SA Rel-17 Prioritization & Content
- SP-190950: Moderated Item Discussions Proposal
To be discussed on a new mailing list 3GPP_TSG_SA_DRAFTS
Security Progress
- The status of SA3 work can be found in the SA3 report (SP-190886)
