Let’s listen to what 5G R18 is talking about?

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The 3GPP website has listed some of the work items that are being discussed in the early stages of the Release 18 version. After a closer look, some of the new items are very interesting as the first version of 5G-Advanced.

Source: https://www.3gpp.org/DynaReport/GanttChart-Level-2.htm#bm900026

Enhanced Access to and Support of Network Slice

Network slicing access and support enhancements

Network slicing is a basic function of the 5G system, which allows flexible and dynamic deployment and adjustment of network resources to meet various needs. In R18, network slicing access and support related functions will be enhanced, including: 1. When there are different types of restrictions (such as wireless resources, frequency bands, etc.), support UE access to network slices, and minimize the impact of service interruption when network slices or allocated resources change; 2. Support the disclosure of network slice control/configuration and other services to third parties.

Supporting members: LG Electronics, Vivo, Tencent, LG Uplus, Futurewei, Nokia, Nokia Shanghai Bell, ETRI, OPPO, KT, Apple, AT&T, InterDigital, KDDI, KPN, Samsung, KRRI, T-Mobile USA, Deutsche Telekom, NTT Docomo, Intel

5G Timing Resiliency System

5G Flexible Timing System

Vertical industries such as electricity, transportation, and finance are increasingly relying on precise clock synchronization, but the current GNSS satellite timing services have certain vulnerabilities, such as low anti-interference capabilities, poor indoor availability, and threats of deception and interference. In response to these problems, some governments and industries are actively studying alternative/backup solutions for GNSS satellite timing. The 5G Timing Resiliency System mainly targets the vulnerability of GNSS satellite timing services and studies other clock synchronization technologies consistent with the 5G system as a resilient clock source for end users, as a supplement, backup, or alternative to GNSS satellite timing.

Supporting members: Nokia, Nokia Shanghai Bell, AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Intel, KDDI, KPN, LG Electronics, NextNav, NTT DoCoMo, Thales, Verizon UK Ltd

Ranging-based Services

Distance measurement based services

Positioning algorithms include range-based positioning algorithms, which measure the distance or angle information between points based on ranging algorithms. Currently, ranging-based positioning algorithms are becoming more and more popular in smart homes, smart cities, smart transportation, smart retail, Industry 4.0 and other fields. However, different applications in different vertical industries have different requirements for performance indicators such as distance accuracy, angle information accuracy, maximum ranging range, and ranging delay. R18 will study the relevant specifications for ranging service requirements, covering ranging operations between UEs, operator control of ranging functions under licensed spectrum, ranging KPIs (distance accuracy and azimuth accuracy, etc.) and security aspects.

Supporting members: Xiaomi, CATT, CMCC, China Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, Fudan, Futurewei, Huawei, Lenovo, OPPO, Sharp, Spreadtrum Communications, vivo, ZTE

Low Power High Accuracy Positioning for Industrial IoT Scenarios

Low-power and high-precision positioning for industrial IoT scenarios

Low-power and high-precision positioning is crucial for the Industrial Internet of Things. On the one hand, in order to achieve high-precision positioning, Industrial Internet of Things devices need to frequently obtain real-time location information for positioning, which consumes more battery power; on the other hand, Industrial Internet of Things devices are mostly deployed in some "dangerous scenarios", such as production operation areas of power plants, chemical plants, and mines. Frequent battery replacement is very inconvenient. Therefore, it is necessary to study enhanced low-power technologies to extend battery life (may take 1 to 2 years) to meet the high-precision positioning needs of the Industrial Internet of Things. At present, 3GPP has defined low-precision positioning (positioning accuracy is about 10 meters), but both positioning accuracy and power consumption do not meet the requirements of low-power and high-precision positioning in Industrial Internet of Things scenarios.

Supporting members: Huawei, Hisilicon, China Mobile, Spreadtrum, CATT, Vivo, Novamint, EDF, Orange, KPN, Vodafone, Xiaomi, Nokia, Sony, Deutsche Telekom, China Telecom, China Unicom, Philips

Supporting of Railway Smart Station Services

Railway Smart Station Services

Smart railway stations can provide passengers with a variety of operational services and value-added services. For example, through the integration of 5G networks, platforms and AI, they can provide services such as warm reminders, smart evacuation, smart ticket verification, and smart inquiries. This can not only improve the railway station service system, but also improve service efficiency and reduce service costs. 3GPP will study use cases related to smart railway station services, such as platform operation monitoring and passenger support services.

Supporting members: Hansung University, LG Uplus, KT, SK Telecom, ETRI, UIC, LG Electronics

Off-Network for Rail

Off-network railway communications

Future railway communications are an important part of the digitalization of railway operations. In the field of railway mobile communications, in addition to network-based communications, it also includes direct communication between UEs that is independent of the network, which is the Off-Network technology.

Off-Network is a new term in the field of railway communication, which has been introduced in the 3GPP MCX standard. When the network fails or there is no network coverage in remote mountainous areas, railway communication can use Off-Network for communication. The 3GPP MCX specification defines that railway communication can use Off-Network even when the network is available.

In addition to voice communication, future Off-Network communication will be applied to data communication for key tasks such as automatic train protection, automatic train operation, real-time video, virtual coupling data communication, etc. In R18, 3GPP will study new use cases for future railway mobile communication systems based on Off-Network, as well as related technologies such as QoS, priority, UE ID and location identification, multicast/broadcast/unicast, communication range, potential spectrum, etc.

Supporting members: UIC, Nokia, Nokia Shanghai Bell, Hansung University, ETRI, KT Corp, LG Uplus, FirstNet, BDBOS

supporting tactile and multi-modality communication services

Supports tactile and multimodal communication services

Haptic and multimodal communication refers to responding to inputs through multiple communication channels that affect user experience, such as video, audio, environmental perception, and touch, and combining network capabilities such as ultra-low latency, ultra-high reliability, and security to achieve a truly immersive user experience. Among them, environmental perception refers to the perception of brightness, temperature, humidity, and other information through sensors; tactile data includes pressure, texture, vibration, temperature, and other perception data fed back when touching the surface of an object, as well as gravity, tension, position, and other perception data. This technology can be applied to multiple fields such as remote human-computer interaction, remote operation, robot social networks, and industrial Internet of Things services.

For example, in real-time remote VR services, VR users will use multiple independent devices to collect audio, video, environment and tactile data, and receive audio, video, environment and tactile feedback from multiple application servers. In this scenario, users will wear VR glasses to receive images and sounds, and receive tactile information through tactile gloves, and provide tactile and environmental information to the other end user through cameras, microphones, wearable sensors, etc.

To support tactile and multimodal communication services, 5G systems need to meet the different network speed, latency and reliability requirements of different data streams, and also need to synchronize multiple parallel data streams, which is a major challenge to 5G network capabilities. R18 will study new use cases involving tactile and multimodal communication technologies, as well as technical indicators such as network reliability, availability, security, privacy, data rate, latency, and transmission interval related to these use cases.

Supporting members: China Mobile, Huawei, Spreadtrum Communications, Futurewei, ZTE, Tencent, VIVO, OPPO, CATT, China Telecom, China Unicom, CAICT, InterDigital, Verizon UK, CEPRI, Xiaomi, KPN, ABS, Orange

Vehicle-Mounted Relays

In-vehicle 5G relay

As 5G continues to develop, the requirements for network coverage and capacity are getting higher and higher, and more and more dense base stations need to be deployed. However, the problem is that the site resources in the city are limited, the site selection of base stations is becoming more and more difficult, and the site rental costs are becoming more and more expensive. To this end, R18 will study the way to expand 5G network coverage by deploying 5G relay stations on vehicles to make full use of the large number of vehicles in the city as "site resources." 5G relay stations use 5G macro base stations as donor base stations and connect to 5G macro base stations through 5G wireless backhaul. There is no need to deploy optical fiber, and they have strong deployment flexibility.

Vehicles in cities usually travel at low speeds. At the same time, the routes of buses, trams and other vehicles are fixed, and most bus stops are surrounded by densely populated areas. By installing 5G relay stations on vehicles, not only can 5G coverage be provided to the surrounding environment outside the vehicle, but 5G services can also be provided to passengers in the vehicle.

Supporting members: Qualcomm Incorporated, Sony, SHARP, InterDigital, OPPO, AT&T, FIRSTNET, Verizon UK Ltd, LG Electronics, Xiaomi, ZTE Corporation, Telstra, vivo Mobile Communications Ltd, SyncTechno, ETRI, DENSO, Robert Bosch, Volkswagen AG

5G Smart Energy and Infrastructure

5G Smart Grid Communications Infrastructure

Building an efficient, safe and stable smart grid has become the development goal of the power industry in various countries, and communication infrastructure is crucial to the successful realization of smart grids. The power grid includes four major links: power generation, transmission, distribution and consumption. Each link needs to be integrated with platforms such as energy management systems and distribution management systems through communication infrastructure to achieve data collection, monitoring, analysis and control of the power grid, and ultimately realize an information-based, digital, automated and interactive smart grid. 5G smart grid communication infrastructure will support microgrid distributed power generation, safe and efficient substation and transmission, flexible and reliable distribution, green electricity consumption, network security and resilience, and many other aspects.

In the field of 5G smart grid, relevant Chinese enterprises have made significant contributions to promoting the formulation of standards. In the "5G Network Slicing Enables Smart Grid" jointly issued by State Grid and other enterprises and the "5G Assists Smart Grid Application White Paper" jointly issued by China Southern Power Grid and other enterprises, some services and requirements of 5G smart grid have been defined. For example, through exploration and practice, network delay, clock synchronization, jitter, reliability, connection density, business isolation and other related indicators have been determined for relay protection, telemetry, remote control, differential protection, etc. in the power grid automation distribution system. R18 will study the potential service requirements of 5G smart grid, including the communication requirements such as capacity, delay, reliability, end-to-end QoS, elasticity and security that meet 5G smart grid services, the use cases such as distributed power supply system, distribution automation, high-precision power load monitoring and control, meter automation, etc., and the KPI and service requirements of 5G wireless communication required for distributed power generation in microgrids, etc.

Supporting members: Alibaba, CATT, CEPRI-China, China Mobile, China Southern Power Grid, China Telecom, China Unicom, Fudan University, Futurewei, Huawei, Huawei Device, Novamint, OPPO, Orange, Samsung, Sequans, SONY, Spreadtrum, Thales, Telefonica, Tencent, Telus, Xiaomi, ZTE

Enhancements for Residential 5G

Residential 5G Enhancements

The convergence of wired and wireless networks, and fixed and mobile networks, is a major trend. On the one hand, operators can expand users and increase user stickiness by bundling home broadband with mobile packages; on the other hand, people always watch videos and play games at home after get off work. Home is a high-traffic scenario and a high-value scenario for operators. However, due to the higher frequency band of 5G, it is difficult for signals to penetrate from outdoor to indoor. The home scenario is also a weak coverage area or coverage blind spot of 5G. It is necessary to integrate with the fixed network and deploy 5G micro stations in the home to improve home network coverage and increase the revenue source of operators.

But the problem is that the fixed network and mobile network belong to different systems. How can the two be perfectly integrated? In the mobile network, the terminal is known and identifiable to the mobile core network, which can provide customized and differentiated services for different terminals, which is conducive to improving service levels and network management and operation. However, those terminals connected through the fixed network are unknown and unidentifiable to the mobile core network. Based on the trend of fixed-mobile convergence, residential 5G enhancement will unify the wireless access network and the fixed access network to the 5G core network, so that the core network can also identify and manage the terminals under the fixed-network home gateway, and will conduct research in the aspects of enhanced fixed-mobile convergence, enhanced fixed-network LAN and 5G LAN convergence, and enhanced indoor micro-stations.

Supporting members: KPN, TNO, Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile USA, Orange, Telefonica, Convida Wireless, China Telecom, InterDigital, Huawei, Vodafone, Philips, Intel

Personal IoT Networks

Personal Internet of Things

Personal Internet of Things (PIoT) refers to the Internet of Things around personal and family scenarios. Its terminal devices include home appliances such as door sensors, light switches, ovens, TVs, air conditioners, washing machines, refrigerators, voice assistants, and personal cameras, headphones, watches, cars, bicycles, etc. The communication distance is within tens of meters. 3GPP has developed NB-IoT and eMTC standards for industrial Internet of Things, but has not yet paid attention to the field of personal Internet of Things.

At present, there are many different communication technologies used in the field of personal Internet of Things. For example, in the smart home scenario, a variety of non-3GPP wireless technologies such as Z-Wave, Zigbee, Bluetooth, NFC and WLAN can be used in the PIoT network. At the same time, the smart gateway in the home needs to be connected to the cloud or mobile phone through the Internet or mobile communication network outside the PIoT network to facilitate remote monitoring and management of the smart home. This brings problems such as complex connection and cumbersome configuration to the personal Internet of Things, and there are also hidden dangers of network instability. For example, the best-effort Internet connection itself is unstable. To solve these problems, R18 will study the enhancement of 5G system support for PIoT, such as studying the connection between PIoT network and 5G core network through local RAN gateway, and studying the relevant use cases and technical indicator requirements of PIoT network based on 5G system support.

Supporting members: vivo Mobile Communications Ltd, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Convida Wireless, Huawei, Huawei Device, InterDigital, KPN, NOVAMINT, Philips, Qualcomm Incorporated, Sony, Xiaomi

traffic characteristics and performance requirements for AI/ML model transfer in 5GS

Study on traffic characteristics and performance requirements for transmitting AI/ML models in 5G systems

In the 5G era, AI will be distributed in the cloud, edge, pipe, and end links, and will adopt a cloud-edge-end collaborative AI processing approach. For example, the cloud is responsible for model training, and then the generated model is sent to the edge/terminal for reasoning and analysis; for example, due to the limitations of the terminal's computing power and power consumption, the terminal will transmit data to the edge for reasoning and execute commands from the edge; at the same time, because centralized training will bring a huge computing burden to the cloud, and for data privacy protection reasons, some scenarios do not allow local data to be uploaded to the cloud for training. There will also be federated learning and distributed learning modes that combine cloud and local.

In this way, AI/ML models and training data will become a new type of traffic transmitted in 5G networks. Therefore, it is necessary to study the traffic characteristics and performance requirements of AI/ML models transmitted in 5G networks. R18 will study the network performance requirements such as rate, latency, reliability, coverage, and capacity required for uploading/downloading AI/ML models, and study traffic feature identification and performance requirements in scenarios such as segmented AI/ML operations, distribution and sharing of AI/ML models and data, federated learning and distributed learning, etc., to better support AI/ML (machine learning) services such as image recognition, speech recognition, robots, and smart cars.

Supporting members: OPPO, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Telstra, Verizon UK Ltd, Qualcomm, LG Electronics, Sony, Huawei, FutureWei, Alibaba, CATT, ZTE, Peking University, BUPT

Overall, R18 will continue to move into vertical fields such as energy, transportation, manufacturing, media, and healthcare.

References: SP-210210, SP-210211, SP-210212, SP-210216, SP-190838, SP-200572, SP-201039, SP-200798, SP-200574, SP-200576, SP-200592, SP-191040 and other 3GPP work item descriptions