5G was standardized by the 3GPP Release 15 and Release 16 specifications in the years 2018 and 2020 respectively. 3GPP Release 17 – also known as continued 5G evolution was completed in the year 2022. It built further on previous releases with notable emphasize on new capabilities such as Reduced capability (RedCap) devices, New Radio (NR) over Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN), Enhanced support of Non-Public Networks (NPN), enhancement in RAN slicing, Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) etc.

Let us understand some of these terms here –

• Reduced capability (RedCap) User Equipment (UE): It is also known as ‘NR-Lite’ devices. In the past the higher cost of 5G IoT devices has been perceived to be a bottleneck in wider adoption. So, this type of devices with lower cost and lower capability has been introduced. The target capability is to serve a wide range of use cases such as wearables, industry sensors, smart meters etc.
• Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN): It primarily refers to satellite communications but also includes other forms of non-terrestrial set-up such as through a UAV. With NTN even the remotest regions can be connected with 5G network.
• Non-Public Networks (NPN): NPN, also referred to as a private network, is a network that is intended for the non-public (or private) use. It can be a dedicated network for an industrial manufacturing set-up, mining organization and so on.
• Time Sensitive Networking (TSN): It refers to a set of protocols and architecture elements that enable real-time synchronization and provides a deterministic, low-latency communication. TSN is an extension to the standard Ethernet protocol but it adds critical features for applications requiring high availability, robustness, and reliability.

From the above small samples of features and capabilities, we can see there is a consistent effort to address some of the gaps which have been hindering adoption of 5G for other use cases beyond EMBB. For example, RedCap will be useful for wider proliferation of IIoT use cases; TSN will be complimentary for industrial URLLC types of use cases and so on.

3GPP Release 18, which was completed in 2024 is known to be as the introduction of 5G Advanced.

5G Advanced (also known as 5.5G, before its full-fledged evolution to 6G) will also follow a life cycle and gradually evolve across the Releases 18, 19 and 20. It’ll create the platform for more demanding applications by providing enhanced performance and support for advanced features. Moreover, it’ll utilize AI-ML for network optimization, automation and sustainable operations.

Let’s see some focus areas and enhancements in 5G Advanced.

• Enhanced capacity and performance improvement through multiple technical leverages including – MIMO advancements; evolution of duplex operation; further NR mobility enhancements. These will pave the way for more bandwidth intensive use cases such as Extended Reality (XR) use cases
• Harnessing the power of AI/ML – there are many potential use cases on AI/ML – some specific scenarios are prioritized in Release 18 such as: Channel State Information (CSI) feedback, Beam Management and Positioning. Augmenting air interface with AI/ML based algorithms is expected to result in enhanced performance. Some other interesting areas of AI/ ML are mobility prediction, energy consumption reductions and load balancing.
• Sidelink evolution – ‘sidelink’ refers to a device-to-device connectivity that allows direct communication between 2 devices without the help of a base station. The support for NR sidelink was introduced in Release 16 for V2X (Vehicle to any) scenarios. In Release 18, support for sidelink in unlicensed spectrum has been specified as very high data rates can be supported here.
• Enhanced positioning – This release provided the support for positioning over sidelink, i.e., positioning or ranging between two UEs (smartphones or vehicles). Also, it introduced the support for carrier-phase based positioning, increasing the accuracy of positioning methods to centimeter level. In addition, support for Low-Power High-Accuracy Positioning and increased positioning accuracy for RedCap UEs are worked out.
• Energy consumption reduction – 5G Advanced also addressed one of the key requirements from sustainability point of view – it is RAN energy consumption reduction through various techniques in time, frequency, spatial, and power domain.
• NTN Enhancements – Further evolution for Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) has been specified that includes IoT NTN as well as coverage enhancements for commercial smartphones.
• Deterministic Network (DetNet) support – Release 17 added support for Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) while Release 18 adds support for Deterministic Networking (DetNet) to enable IIoT use cases. DetNet focuses on deterministic data paths that operate over Layer 2 bridged and Layer 3 routed segments, where such paths can provide bounds on latency, loss, and packet delay variation (jitter), and high reliability.
• Other enhancements include Standardized support for Reduced Capability devices, Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) enhancement, Mission Critical Services enhancements, XR enhancements. For the XR enhancements, the network will become more ‘application aware’ and enable computation offloading to network making the devices simpler and more cost-effective.

Observing all these different enhancements, we’ll see a gradual movement towards diverse possibilities beyond traditional EMBB based use cases.

One of the proposed sweet spots of 5G monetization from the beginning has been the B2B use cases. In this respect, capabilities like precise positioning will be catalyst towards industrial use cases for mining, warehouse and manufacturing. TSN and DetNet support can enable many Industrial use cases. Standardized support for RedCap UEs is expected to assist further IoT centric use cases in 5G.

Stay tuned for more insights from Tejas Networks on wireless and wireline technology evolution!

References:

• https://www.3gpp.org/specifications-technologies/releases/release-15
• https://www.3gpp.org/specifications-technologies/releases/release-16
• https://www.3gpp.org/specifications-technologies/releases/release-17
• https://www.3gpp.org/specifications-technologies/releases/release-18
• https://www.3gpp.org/newsletter-issue-07-nov-2023
• https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/Workshops-and-Seminars/2023/0724/Documents/Jaewook_Lee.pdf
• https://www.comsoc.org/publications/ctn/quick-and-dead-rise-deterministic-networks