Introduction and problem statement

After a number of years of research and technical development the initial 5G New Radio technology according to Release 15 is now deployed as mainstream technology serving the public and industry. Similarly to LTE there will be several evolutions of New Radio within the upcoming 3GPP releases. Many extensions are currently under investigation in 3GPP to enable addressing further markets by cellular based communication systems like automotive and industrial automation.

3GPP Release 17 represents a unique opportunity to standardize satellite as an integral part of 5G together with the cellular stakeholders showing their increasing interest in the topic. 3GPP has approved the work item  3GPP RP-193234 “Solutions for NR to support non-terrestrial networks (NTN)” for Release 17 [1] to support satellites . This opportunity has to be seized immediately to eliminate the risk of a postponement of the standard development to future Releases beyond 17 while SatCom users and service providers are calling for standardized solutions.

The 5G-METEORS vision is to implement and operate a framework supporting dynamic prototyping in the 5G satellite convergence domain. 5G-METEORS responds in an agile manner to technology developments driven by the market and the standardization work in 3GPP to support satellites in 5G through a series of prototyping and concept validation activities.

The activity 5G-EmuSat within the 5G-METEORS Makerspace currently implements the relevant parts of the lower radio layers (PHY, MAC) of the 5G NR waveform (accompanied e.g. by a simplified control plane) with the necessary adaptations, based on the two finalized 3GPP study items on Non-Terrestrial Networks, [2] and [3]. 5G-EmuSat is developing the New Radio implementation based on OpenAirInterface [4] and provides low power RF interfaces up to 6 GHz. The validation of the implementation before performing over the air tests live over satellite is done in the lab using a channel emulator that includesa satellite option. For further details, please contact 5G-EmuSat .

This activity shall validate in real-time the SDR platform as developed in the 5G-EmuSat activity live over a GEO satellite.

Expected Output

• Real-time validation of the OAI based implementation from 5G-EmuSat over GEO satellite with static terminals.
  • Attach/detach procedure;
  • User plane performance in connected mode with different Modulation and Coding Schemes (MCS);
• Technical note on findings;
• Joint press release.

Duration and schedule (mid term milestone and review, if applicable)

The validation over satellite shall be performed from September 2020 within a total duration of 3 months.

Maximum budget available for the activity

The budget of this activity shall not exceed 20.000 €.

References

[1] 3GPP RP-193234, “Solutions for NR to support non-terrestrial networks (NTN)”, Sitges, Spain, 2019-12

[2] 3GPP TR 38.811, “Study on New Radio (NR) to support non terrestrial networks (Release 15)”, V15.2.0 (2019-09)

[3] 3GPP TR 38.821, “Solutions for NR to support non-terrestrial networks (NTN) (Release 16)”, V16.0.0 (2019-12)

[4] OpenAirInterface Software Alliance, www.openairinterface.org

Proposal Submission

Submit your proposal to this topic here.