3GPP Release 18 Frozen A New Milestone for 5G Technology

TapTechNews June 18th news. According to the YEPs source, the 3GPP Release 18 technical standard was officially frozen at 16:30 today at the 104th meeting of the 3GPP RAN held in Shanghai, marking another important milestone for 5G technology.

Before this, 3GPP has successfully frozen the R15, R16, and R17 versions of the 5G standard. R15, as the first complete version of 5G, was officially frozen in 2019, laying the foundation for 5G technology and providing a solid foundation for subsequent evolution.

The R16 version was frozen in 2020, mainly optimizing and enhancing for the fields of the Internet of Things, Internet of Vehicles, etc., further broadening the application range of 5G technology.

The R17 version was frozen in 2022, mainly focusing on improving network energy efficiency and optimizing network slicing, providing strong support for the intelligent and efficient of 5G networks.

Today's frozen R18 is not only the fourth version of the 5G standard, but also the first version for 5G-A technology, indicating that 5G technology will enter a brand new development stage.

TapTechNews Note: 5G-A is fully known as 5G-Advanced, also known as 5.5G, which is the technological evolution of 5G, and can achieve significant improvements in terms of capacity, rate, delay, positioning, and reliability compared to 5G.

According to the introduction, the R18 standard has taken more than 3 years from project establishment to freezing, carrying the expectations of the industry to explore new values, explore new fields, and connect the next generation, and has the following three characteristics.

First, expand the scenarios to enable 5G to do more.

The R18 standard further expands the application scenarios of 5G, including connected unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), air-to-ground communication, virtual/augmented reality, etc. For the connected UAV in response to problems such as heavy interference, messy signals, and fragmented coverage in low-altitude networking, a measurement mechanism based on height and an air interface update reporting mechanism based on time/distance for flight trajectory is introduced to improve the networking performance and contribute to the development of low-altitude economy; ATG (Air-To-Ground) addresses the ultra-long-haul coverage, ultra-high-speed rate, and air-ground interference issues in aviation communication, formulating standard solutions such as new phased array antenna radio frequency architecture, time-frequency domain compensation, and location-based handover to achieve 0 blind zone with a maximum 300km coverage distance and support a flight rate of up to 1200km/h; for virtual/augmented reality business with large bandwidth, low latency, high reliability, and high capacity requirements, cross-layer optimization is used to achieve global optimization of information transmission, enabling high-capacity low-latency networks and reducing terminal power consumption, accelerating the popularization of immersive services and giving birth to new applications in the industry.

Second, dig deep into the potential to enable 5G to do better.

In response to high-value scenarios in the previous versions of 5G, the R18 continues to enhance the standard by digging deep into potential problems and challenges. On the basis of the R17 low-cost terminal RedCap, to enhance the competitiveness of the 5G system in the field of low-cost Internet of Things applications, the R18 further adapts to the low-peak-rate requirements of the RedCap terminal (not higher than 10 Mbps), reduces the transmission bandwidth (not more th an 5 MHz) and peak rate of the terminal baseband uplink and downlink shared channel, with the expectation of further reduction in terminal cost and energy consumption. On the basis of R17 NTN, to further solve the frequent handover problem caused by the ultra-high-speed movement of medium and low orbit satellites, in the R18, through the coordination of satellite communication and other information of the network and terminals, the terminal seamless handover is achieved, effectively avoiding the frequent signaling storm and service interruption problems caused by traditional handover. To further save the cost of network operation and deployment, the R18 standard introduces functions such as network energy saving, intelligent repeater, and network intelligence/automation.

Third, explore directions to enable an effective connection between 5G and 6G.

The R18 standard warms up and prepares for 6G, exploring the UDD technology that can bring the ultimate performance of TDD into full play. This technology breaks the traditional TDD duplex mode and realizes duplex transmission by enabling the base station to receive and send simultaneously on different sub-bands of one TDD carrier, achieving extremely low transmission waiting delay in TDD spectrum and enhancing the uplink capacity to meet the dual service requirements of low latency and large uplink; explores the combination of wireless network and artificial intelligence technology, and empowers traditional air interface functions such as codebook feedback, beam measurement, and positioning through artificial intelligence/machine learning, using AI as a powerful tool to further improve network spectrum efficiency and terminal positioning ability.