G-Related Standards and Industry Fora Landscape

4. 5G-Related Standards and Industry Fora Landscape

4.1 3GPP Activities

Since early 2015, the 3GPP Services and Requirements Working Group has been working on the study phase for 5G service requirements, known as SMARTER work. This stage 1 study work, which is part of 3GPP Release 14, is well underway with the high-level technical report that proposes overall high-level 5G service requirements and is to be finalized in June 2016.

There are also four detailed TRs (known as Building Block TRs) that provide more detailed proposed service requirements for the following four areas: massive IoT, critical communications, enhanced mobile broadband and network operation (Figure 1). These Building Block TRs are expected to be stable by June 2016 and will then be used as input to the group’s Release 15 work on 5G: i.e., development of the normative service requirements for 5G. These will be the standardized service requirements for 3GPP’s Phase 1 of 5G. These requirements are targeted for completion June 2017.

Figure . 3GPP SMARTER Service Dimensions

The 3GPP System Architecture Working Group approved a 5G study titled “Study on Architecture for Next Generation System” in fourth quarter 2015 as part of Release 14, and work on it has quickly ramped up. The scope of the study includes:

• 
  Designing a system architecture for the next-generation mobile networks.
  
• 
  Supporting at least the new RAT(s), the evolved LTE, non-3GPP access and minimize access dependencies.
  
• 
  Considering an evolution of the current architecture or a “clean slate” approach.
  
• 
  Considering scenarios of migration to the new architecture.
  

The 3GPP Security Working Group recently approved study on security aspects for the next generation system that is targeted for completion by December 2016. The objective is to study preliminary threats, requirements and solutions for the security of next generation mobile networks. The expected work will include:

• 
  Collection, analysis and further investigation of potential security threats and requirements for the next generation systems, based on the work of 3GPP Working Groups.
  
• 
  Investigation of the security architecture and access security in co-operation with SA2, RAN2 and RAN3.
  

• 
  Target a single technical framework addressing all usage scenarios, requirements and deployment scenarios.
  
• 
  The new RAT shall be inherently forward compatible
  
• 
  High priority on gaining a common understanding on what is required in terms of radio protocol structure and architecture:
  

o Study feasibility of different options of splitting the architecture

o Study and outline the RAN-CN interface and functional split

• 
  Study and identify the basic structure and operation of realization of RAN networks functions (NFs) and to what extent it is feasible to standardize RAN NFs and interfaces
  
• 
  Study and identify specification impacts of enabling the realization of network slicing
  
• 
  Study and identify the technical features necessary to enable the NR to meet above objectives, including tight interworking between NR and LTE, interworking with non-3GPP systems, operation in licensed bands (paired and unpaired), licensed assisted operations in unlicensed bands and multiplexing of traffic for different services and use cases on the same contiguous block of spectrum
  
• 
  Provide performance evaluation of the technologies identified, identify relevant RF parameters used to be used for sharing and co-existence studies and identify technical solutions that enable support for wireless relay
  

Work has now moved into the RAN WGs, where initial contributions and discussions took place during the week of April 11-15, 2016. The study phase is targeted for completion by June 2017.

Currently 3GPP TSG SA and RAN have agreed on the following release dates associated with SMARTER and NR:

Table 4. 3GPP Planned Release Timing for 5G Related Studies & Technical Specifications¹⁷

Rel-14 (initial studies on “5G”)	Stage 1: freeze date March 2016 Stage 2: Target date September 2016 Stage 3: Target date March 2017
Rel-15 (aka "5G phase 1"):	Stage 1 freeze: June 2017 Stage 2 freeze: December 2017 Stage 3 freeze: June 2018 ASN-1 freeze: Sept 2018
Rel-16 (aka "5G phase 2"):	Stage 1 freeze: December 2018 Stage 2 freeze: June 2019 Stage 3 freeze: December 2019 ASN-1 freeze: Mar 2020 Basis for the submission to ITU-R