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5G New Radio -Explained in a Nutshell: Understand the Latest 5G Radio Specs

Book · April 2019

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Ali A. Esswie
Nokia Bell Labs
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Table of Contents
Preface ............................................................................................................................................................................... 3

Author Biography ............................................................................................................................................................. 4

Introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................... 5

Key differences of the 3G/4G/5G Mobile Generations ............................................................................................ 6

Why Do Not Simply Evolve the Fourth Generation? .............................................................................................. 12

5G requirements and Gap to LTE/4G ....................................................................................................................... 17

3GPP Standardization of the 5G New Radio ................................................................................................................ 22

Main Building Blocks of the 5G New Radio Architecture ........................................................................................... 25

5G Radio Access Network: Radio Protocols ............................................................................................................ 27

5G Spectrum ............................................................................................................................................................... 33

5G Flexible Frame Structure ..................................................................................................................................... 43

5G Massive MIMO and Beamforming ....................................................................................................................... 46

5G Bandwidth Parts Operation ................................................................................................................................. 55

5G Flexible TDD Transmission .................................................................................................................................. 57

5G Multi Connectivity ................................................................................................................................................ 61

5G New Radio Beamformed Access ......................................................................................................................... 63

5G User-centric Reference Signals .......................................................................................................................... 65

Beyond 3GPP 5G Release-15 ......................................................................................................................................... 70

Concluding Remarks ...................................................................................................................................................... 72

References to 5G 3GPP Documents ............................................................................................................................. 73

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Preface

This book introduces the major conceptional principals of the state-of-the-art fifth generation

(5G) radio system design, including its main driving technology pillars, radio interface design, and

the disruptive quality of service architectures. In a simple and very easy-to-digest way, this book

brings down the latest 5G radio standard specifications; however, with an effortless story telling

style, that would be easily accessible by undergrads, grads and early researchers. Accordingly,

the 3GPP specs of the 5G new radio are ultimately simplified, with in-text illustrative examples

and on-the-fly reviews of potentially-needed prerequisite knowledge.

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Author Biography

Ali A. Esswie is an expert wireless research engineer, equipped with distinctive experience of industrial and

academic technical projects. He is currently with Nokia Bell Labs as a wireless research standardization

engineer. During 2013-2016, he was with Intel Labs and Huawei performance group, respectively, engaging

in a diversity of multi-national research projects including realistic cellular deployments. Furthermore, he

obtained his BSc. degree from Cairo University with academic honors. Later, he got his MSc. degree from

Memorial University of Canada when he won the Fellow of the graduate school for research excellence.

Currently, Ali is pursuing his PhD degree at the electronic systems department at Aalborg University. Ali

owns many high quality academic publications, published in world flagship academic conferences and

journals, in addition to invention intellectual reports which span the fundamental 4G/5G system design

principals.

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Reading Keys

‘e.g.,’ denotes: for example, or for instance. It simply provides an example of the respective text.

‘i.e.,’ denotes: that is, or in other sense, in other way. It simply introduces another way of expressing the

former text.

‘−‘ implies: a side note or further explanation or review of prerequisite knowledge of former text.

‘BS’ or ‘base-station’ or ‘eNodeB’ or ‘gNB’: all denote the base-station end of the 4G and 5G radios.

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Introduction

Since 1970s, a new cellular mobile generation tends to appear every 10 years period. Since then, our global

societies have been dramatically influenced by the advances in the wireless communications, pushing

towards a more modernized way of life. The first mobile generation (1G) was dictated by analogue

communications. Later, second generation (2G) has introduced the digital audio communications as well

as text messaging during 1989. The third generation (3G) accordingly has been developed mainly to meet

the wave of the data communication demand at this time and was finally frozen in standards by the end

of 2007. More specifically, the 3G technology has witnessed five different major updates, i.e., standard

releases, each was majorly concerned by several system design improvements to support higher data

rates. At the end of the 3G era, it was encompassed by what is globally re-known as

– simply put, the truly mature version of the 3G cellular

technology. Well then, first let me give you a quick glimpse on how the state-of-the-art 5G

technology generically adopts a different set of conceptional design principals, that are quite

different from former generations.

Key differences of the 3G/4G/5G Mobile Generations

Mainly, the 5G technology comes with a so-called . The 5G new radio implies that the

radio interface becomes much more agile and simply programmable in time, equipped by further

sophisticated radio communications over the air as well as numerous technology variations that

were not available with the former 4G and 3G systems. In Table I, the main differences between

the major cellular standards are precisely presented – let’s lightly go through them one by one.

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 Table 1: Major differences between 3G, 4G and 5G cellular systems.

Item 3G 4G 5G
Downlink waveform CDMA OFDM OFDM
Uplink waveform CDMA SC-OFDM SC-OFDM
Channel coding Turbo Turbo LDPC (data) – Polar (control)
Transmission time interval 10/2 ms 1 ms Flexible {0.143, 0.5, 1, …} ms
Beamforming NA Data Data + Control
Bandwidth 5 MHz 0.4-20 MHz Up to 100/400 MHz
Quality of service Bearer based Bearer based Flow/packet based
Network slicing NA NA Supported
Fast transmissions NA NA Connectionless
Cloud services NA NA In-Built

Twenty years ago, the 3G networks adopted the code division multiple access (CDMA) to multiplex

different users over time, where each user is assigned a specific sequence code, which it should

use to decode its data. Although, CDMA has been proven to provide a limited capacity and

scheduling flexibility due to the non-zero correlation between sequence codes.

– basically, we do not have as many perfectly-orthogonal codes as the number of connected

users. Then, the 4G technology later upgraded the multiplexing technology to the orthogonal

frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) where users are multiplexed over sereval time and

frequency resources by using an orthogonalized carrier design.

– imagine the whole bandwidth is divided into many smaller pipelines, each user may be assigned

a non-contiguous (OFDM) or contiguous (single carrier OFDM (SC-OFDM)) number of these

bandwidth pipelines.

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 3GPP Standardization of the 5G New Radio

3GPP has been created since 1998 as a joint standardization activity between USA, Europe, Japan,

and Korea. As of now, the 3GPP has become the leading standardization body for cellular

communications, and it is taking full leadership of the 5G standardization. 3GPP is topped by a

project coordination group (PSG), where its members manage three major technical specification

groups (TSGs), – think of a TSG as a specialized committee that is concerned only about

standardizing a certain system partition. Accordingly, each TSG is divided to several work groups

(WGs) which look closer in a more specialized and narrow way into standardizing specific system

aspects of the belonging TSG. Furthermore, as you may have heard the term work items (WIs)

before, they define the technical work and studies that will be performed within each WG. In

general sense, 3GPP TSGs usually hold 4 plenary meetings per year, typically in March, June,

September and December while there are 1-2 meetings of the corresponding WGs between every

TSG two successive meetings. So, WGs propose and study the technical aspects of the concerned

system design principals within their scope and provide recommendations to the parent TSGs for

final decisions.

Hence, the general structure of the 3GPP organization is as follows:

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