Although 5G has been a hot topic for many years, there is still a lot of work to be done behind the scenes in improving and effectively iterating the standards. Since the release of the 15th edition of the 3GPP standard at the end of 2018, the 16th edition has made great leaps in many areas, providing key functions for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) industry. The 16th edition was completed in July 2020. This is the second 5G standard and the latest completed version, because 3GPP will pass the upcoming 17th edition.

A recent Accenture report emphasized this point, which listed 5G as a key technology for global manufacturing from 2021 to 2025, increasing productivity by 20% to 30%, increasing assembly efficiency by 50%, and Increase the defect detection rate to 90%. Accenture predicts that in the agricultural industry, 5G will help increase global productivity by 25%, reduce costs by 20%, and increase crop yields by 15%.

Large-scale reliability enhancement

The 16th edition of 5G NR (New Radio) brings vital reliability and latency improvements in several key areas. The most obvious is the enhancement of the 5G URLLC foundation to provide better link reliability (up to 99.9999 %). An important technology in this reliability drive is coordinated multipoint (CoMP), which provides various benefits by coordinating the transmission in the downlink and jointly processing the received signal in the uplink. This prevents interruption when the path is blocked and reduces the impact of any interference. This improved reliability and latency, thanks in part to CoMP and Time Sensitive Networking (TSN), is driving new use cases, such as the use of remote robots in indoor environments, such as Qualcomm’s recent automated guided vehicle (AGV) (YouTube video ) Demo.

MU-MIMO, energy saving and NPN

Another reliability enhancement is that multi-beam management in multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO) has been greatly improved, while power efficiency has also been improved. Beamforming and multi-beam management are particularly important for millimeter wave bands, and they themselves are essential for maintaining bandwidth when lower frequency bands become crowded. Version 16 also supports full-power uplinks to improve the coverage of all MIMO-enabled devices at the edge of the cell.

In fact, the 16th edition specifically targets energy efficiency in many areas, improves the end user’s mobile experience, and supports the development of new use cases where power consumption is a key issue, such as remote IIoT deployment. One example in the announcement is the new wake-up signal (WUS), which will alert the device that the transmission is pending, otherwise keep it in a low-power mode, thereby eliminating the need for continuous network monitoring, which is a power-consuming requirement.

Other key innovations include clear regulations on non-public networks (NPN), which has led to a proliferation of private network products offered by manufacturers and operators. In industrial IoT use cases, these networks have gained tremendous traction, enabling companies to immediately deploy 5G industrial IoT networks with dedicated resources instead of waiting for a broader 5G network deployment. Other benefits include specific optimizations for local applications and customized security and privacy settings when needed. The 16th edition also adds more reliable NR-based side chains for advanced security use cases in C-V2X applications, as well as new system features such as two-step RACH and VoNR circuit switch back.

5G NR 17th and before 18th edition

The 17th edition builds on many of these aspects; some are very straightforward-the Qualcomm AGV demo provides data on OTA target threshold positioning directly to the 17th edition. The main key features of the 17th edition include URLLC for the Industrial Internet of Things, NR sidechains, integrated access and backhaul (IAB), network slicing for NR, and support for multi-SIM devices for LTE/NR. In addition, the 32 antennas (32 x 32 MIMO) in the 15th edition (called Massive MIMO or mMIMO) are set to 64, and are further increased in the 17th and 18th editions.

Network slicing has attracted great attention, and many operators and large enterprises are keen to take advantage of the advantages of creating 5G NR network virtual slicing. This can be used to dedicate capacity to smart city-scale autonomous vehicles, emergency services, or utility-related IIoT devices. Nevertheless, from a business network perspective, mission-critical services can be supported, while remaining network capacity can be used for other purposes.

Unfortunately, due to the pandemic restricting 3GPP's face-to-face meetings, version 17 is under pressure. Despite this, the latest update report from the standards body states that by December 2021, RAN1 physical layer specification freezes have made "positive progress."

Subsequently, the third phase of freezing should be carried out before March 2022, and the ASN.1 freezing and performance specifications should be completed before September 2022. At the same time, the 18th edition of the seminar in the summer of 2021 will be "prepared for e-mail discussions on recognized topics." The 18th version will be called "5G Advanced" and may be the last 5G iteration before 6G, although the timeline has not yet been determined.

The development of standards

Although the standard creation and approval process may seem cumbersome, the value of developing a single roadmap for each industry to submit and contribute is invaluable. This process not only ensures that key functions are delivered as expected, but also ensures effective management of issues such as forward compatibility, configurability, and energy efficiency. It avoids unnecessary duplication of work on network upgrades and 5G equipment updates, which will become an increasingly important issue as they become more common. Towards 5G-Advanced!