Confidential

Sharp Laboratories of America, Inc.

5750 NW Pacific Rim Boulevard
Camas, WA 98607

TITL, CRDD BU,

Sharp Corporation.
1-9-2 Nakase, Mihama-ku
Chiba-shi, Chiba, 261-8520, Japan

INTERNAL MEMORANDUM

From: Ken Park, Kimihiko Imamura December 01, 2016

To: ChieMing Chou, Vincent Chen, Angus Yang, Box Kao, Sogo Chen
CC: J.M.Kowalski, Renmao Liu, K.Sekiguchi, N.Okamoto, W.Oh

Pre-Trip Report: 3GPP RAN#74, Vienna, December. 18-21

1. Overview
This report identifies the topics of interest that Sharp expects to actively participate in and
ultimately report the outcomes on after the meeting concludes.

2. Summary
At this meeting, the technical discussion we expect to participate in:
 New Work Items for RAN1
 New Work Items for RAN2
 Rel-15 planning

The Work / Study items that we are most interested in:

 LAA
 Small Cell
 Latency reduction
 Indoor Positioning
 NB-IoT- MTC

The issues that we are most interested in:

 New Work items for Rel-15
 Rel-15 Work plan
 UE Conformance Test Aspects
 Cat.1 UE with single receiver
 External Request for Support
 LTE UE capabilities/FGIs/IoT bits/UE categories

3. Technical discussions

3.1 Issues of relevance to the CPE BU

New Work and Study Items for LAA

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Wideband LAA (RP-162120):

Author: Qualcomm Korea
Justification: A Wideband LAA would be less complexity for both eNB
and UE, compared to CA, when moving to address larger amount of
spectrum
Objective: Study wider carrier bandwidth(s) for licensed assisted access
SCell, larger than 20 MHz (RAN1, RAN2, RAN4), and radio access
architecture where a Wideband LAA SCell connects with a PCell in “Non-
Standalone” mode.
TSG: RAN1 (RAN2 and RAN4)

Study on Further Enhancements to Licensed-Assisted Access with LTE PCell

(RP-162153):
Author: Huawei
Justification: In the LAA design for uplink and downlink, there is
resource not utilized sufficiently due to the compliance with the assisting
Pcell scheduling timing at the subframe boundary
Objective: Specify further LTE enhancements:
 Support of physical layer scheduling with symbol level granularity
in time domain for FS3, for both Rel-13 Rel-14
 Support larger carrier bandwidth(s) (5 GHz band at 40 MHz and
80 MHz) for DL and UL as an LAA Scell
 Support of LTE sidelink over unlicensed carrier, assisted by
licensed carrier
TSG: RAN1 (RAN2 and RAN4)

Study on unlicensed spectrum offloading system enhancements (SP-160835):

Author: Qualcomm
Justification: It is necessary that the NW operator has the ability to
know if data packets of a PDN or Service Data Flow are being routed (on
uplink, downlink or both) on the licensed spectrum cell or the unlicensed
spectrum cell
Objective: Enable the 3GPP system to identify traffic which was
transported over unlicensed access in non-roaming and roaming cases
TSG: SA2

New Work and Study Items for Small Cell

New WI proposal: SCell enhancements for LTE (RP-162155):
Author: Huawei
Justification: Massive CA in Rel-13 provides for to up to 32 component
carriers (CCs). However, activating individual SCell is slow and
inefficient, and thus improvements can be made.
Objective:
 Enable fast switching: L1 indication and signal, L2 MAC
signaling.
 Measurements, feedback, and procedures
 Cross-carrier HARQ retransmissions, including asynchronous
HARQ for UL
 Provide for higher-layer procedures and signaling
TSG: RAN1 (RAN2 and RAN4)

New Work and Study Items for Other

High capacity fixed wireless link for LTE (RP-162164):
Author: Huawei

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Justification: There are opportunities to use LTE as a “Fixed Wireless

Backhaul” to replace fiber/copper connections.
Objective: Specify further LTE enhancements:
 Higher-order modulations (e.g. 1024QAM)
 CA enhancements with reduced GP, DL/UL CA for high
capability UE
 Enhancements for long-distance communications (control
channel)
 MIMO enhancement (e.g. high order MIMO, LA enh. SRS enh.)
 Procedural simplification and overhead reduction (RRM, DM-RS
reduction)
 Control channel enhancements and overhead reduction (e.g.
Joint DCI for multiple SFs and CCs)
 Support 16/32 multiple RX antenna
 Higher-layer procedures and signaling
 Measurement enhancements and simplifications
 Core requirements on high-capability UEs
 Support 16/32 multiple RX antenna
TSG: RAN1 (RAN2 and RAN4)

3.2 Issues of relevance to the Smart Factory and CPE BU

New Work and Study Items for Latency Reduction

Study on LTE enhancements for high reliability with low latency (RP-162205):
Author: Huawei
Justification: The latency are reliability metrics of LTE do not meet
URLLC requirement of IMT-2020, thus a URLLC related study is ongoing
in NR and is expected to be completed by the Rel-14 time frame. It is
also desirable that LTE benefit from improved latency and reliability
features identified in the NR study.
Objective: Reuse the NR study results which are suitable for LTE to
support high reliability and low latency transmissions via enhanced:
 HARQ mechanisms
 Channel coding schemes
 Freq, special, time and carrier diversity.
 Control channels
 Multiplexing of eMBB and URLLC on the same carrier
TSG: RAN1

KJP Note: This proposal from Huawei aligns well with ongoing research
at SLA. However, we should expect similar proposals from Ericson and
Qualcomm.

Work item on Critical communication for LTE (RP-162040)

Author: Ericsson
Justification: The latency are reliability metrics of LTE do not meet
URLLC requirement of IMT-2020. This is in large part due to LTE system
design based on HARQ operation, which gives a high latency cost to
reliability. Fast UL (Rel-14) and shortened TTI and processing time (Rel-
14/15) features improve reliability, but new functionality is needed.
Objective:
 Higher reliability via higher layer data duplication, and repetitions in
time, in spatial domain and in frequency (including CA)
 Support different services with different reliability for the same device
 Enhancements to SPS contention based access in UL and
transmission bundling techniques in UL and DL

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 Introduce necessary UE core, base station core and RRM

measurements
TSG: RAN1

LTE TDD enhancements for low latency (RP-162207):

Author: Huawei
Justification: The frame structure for TDD causes HARQ RTT to not be
efficient (i.e. HARQ-ACK uplink/downlink feedback can be performed
only in uplink/downlink subframe).
Objective: Specify further LTE enhancements for:
 Additional subframe types that provide for different duration and
arrangement of the DL part, GP, and UL part.
 Transmission duration shorter than 1-slot for sPDCCH / sPDSCH /
sPUCCH / sPUSCH
 Base station and UE core requirements to support the above
features
TSG: RAN1 (RAN2)

Study on Enhancements to initial access and scheduling for low-latency LTE

(RP-162294):
Author: Nokia
Justification: Enhancements to reduce Rel-14 latency should be
considered from a system wide view point so as to avoid bottlenecks
Objective: Study techniques for reduction of latency and/or overhead:
 Initial access procedures, including study of possible enhancements
to the random access procedure
 Uplink scheduling procedures, focusing especially on applications
involving low-latency small packet communications.
TSG: RAN1

New Work Items for Indoor Positioning

Even further indoor positioning enhancements for LTE (RP-162297):
Author: Nokia
Justification: UE positioning has potential for massive commercial
applications. E-CID positioning accuracy is dependent on the density of
small cell deployments, which is costly. PRS-only beacons were
introduced in Rel-14 as a low cost network node to transmit PRS only for
OTDOA positioning. PRS-only beacon can also provide a potential
solution to support E-CID positioning with higher indoor positioning
accuracy but lower network deployment cost and lower UE
implementation complexity.
Objective: Specify PRS-based RSRP/RSRQ reporting to support E-CID
involving PRS-only beacons. In addition, other enhancements to improve
positioning accuracy will be studied, and agreed techniques will be
specified
TSG: RAN1 (RAN2)

3.3 Issues of relevance to the IoT BU

New Work and Study Items for NB-IoT- MTC

NB-IoT operation in unlicensed spectrum (RP-162042):
Author: Ericsson.
Justification: The use both licensed and unlicensed spectrum to provide
universal coverage of NB-IoT services is desirable.
Objective:

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 Specify standalone operation of NB-IoT in unlicensed spectrum

 Identify existing unlicensed bands in the range below 1 GHz and the
associated regulatory requirements, including at least the US band
902-928 MHz and EU band 863-870 MHz.
 Define extension of the NB-IoT feature, to support operations in the
unlicensed spectrum (i.e. Phy layer, Control layer and BS core
requirements)
TSG: RAN1 (RAN2 & RAN4)

Study Licensed-downlink-assisted IoT (RP-162158):

Author: Huawei
Justification: The use both licensed and unlicensed spectrum to provide
universal coverage of NB-IoT services is desirable.
Objective:
 Study NB-IoT enhancements for DL LAA in uplink unlicensed
spectrum in support of NB-IoT, for standalone, guard-band, and in-
band operation modes, and the same coverage targets as Rel-13
 Document the relevant existing regulatory requirements for
unlicensed UL spectrum deployment in sub-GHz and ISM 2.4 GHz
bands
 Identify and evaluate physical layer options and enhancements to
NB-IoT to meet the requirements for:
 UL frequency hopping for NPUSCH
 Duty-cycle based UL transmit control for NPUSCH
 UL contention-based access without timing advance
 Enhancements to the NB-IoT RAN protocols to support deployment
in unlicensed spectrum
 Assess base station and terminal operation in:
 2.6 GHz TDD cellular band downlink, with ISM 2.4 GHz band
uplink, and/or with unlicensed sub-GHz bands uplink
 Band 5 and Band 8 cellular bands downlink, with unlicensed sub-
GHz bands uplink.
TSG: RAN1 (RAN2 & RAN4)

Further enhancements of NB-IoT (RP-162057)

Author: Ericsson
Justification: To better support the vertical requirements of mMTC in IMT
2020, the features for NB-IoT need to be enhanced.
Objective:
 Support data transmission in Msg3 and Msg4
 Improved congestion control
 Enhance UE signal level and quality measurement accuracy
 Flexible UE requirements on monitoring for cell (re)selection
 Extend support for UE feedback to improve link adaptation.
 Support latency of at least 10 seconds
 Support coverage of 164 dB Maximum Coupling Loss
 Support UE battery life beyond 10 years
 Support connection density of 1,000,000 devices per square km
TSG: RAN1 (RAN2 & RAN4)

Even further enhanced MTC for LTE (RP-162285):

Author: Ericsson
Justification: Further improvements building on the enhancements
introduced in Rel-13 and Rel-14 for MTC are desired in Rel-15
Objective: TBD when document is submitted
 Relaxed monitoring for paging

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 Relaxed monitoring for cell reselection

 Increased spectral efficiency for UEs in deep coverage scenarios
 Improved access load control
 Congestion/overload control in connected mode
 Identify and address coverage limiting channel(s)
 Improved UL coverage for lower UE power Identify and address
potential issues when switching between CE mode and non-CE
 Improved starting PRACH CE level selection [
 Support for data transmission in Msg3 and Msg4 Latency reduction
in connected mode
 Improved support for CRS muting
 Improved support for standalone MTC carrier
 Lower UE power class
 Supporting higher velocities in CE mode A
 Support latency of at least 10 seconds.
 Support coverage of 164 dB Maximum Coupling Loss (MCL).
 Support UE battery life beyond 10 years.
 Support connection density of 1,000,000 devices per square km.
TSG: RAN1 (RAN2, & RAN3 & RAN4)

Evolution of NB-IoT and eMTC (RP-162127)

Author: Qualcomm
Justification: Further evolution eMTC and NB-IoT technologies in Rel-
15 is needed to improve their power consumption, spectral efficiency and
coverage enhancement.
Objective: Specify the following features for eMTC
 New physical signals and/or channels that can be detected by the
UE using low power, and that are used to initiate the rest of the
baseband processing (e.g. MPDCCH processing) upon its detection.
 Low power operation for higher category UEs by dynamically
reducing its operating bandwidth and number of active receive
chains.
 Orthogonal multiplexing of PUSCH of at least [12] UEs in a single
PRB.
 Enhancements to enable faster eMTC cell acquisition by using
NPSS/NSSS/NPBCH transmitted within the same LTE carrier
Objective: Specify the following features for NB-IoT
 New physical signals and/or channels that can be detected by the
UE using low power, and that are used to initiate the rest of the
baseband processing (e.g. NPDCCH processing) upon its detection
 HARQ-ACK bundling for NPDSCH operation with 2 HARQ
processes
 Specify mechanisms to enable transmission of uplink data with
reduced overhead and latency.
 Enhancements to the random access procedure and/or physical
random access channel to support cell radius of at least 100km
TSG: RAN1 (RAN2, & RAN4)

NB-IoT enhancement WID for LTE system (RP-162226):

Author: ZTE
Justification: Useful features for eMTC and NB-IoT are missing from
Rel-14
Objective: Specify the following improvements
 Support of UTDOA based positioning
 Enhancement for RACH process to improve the efficiency of small
packet transmission
 Enhancement for PRACH performance and capacity

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 Enhancement of resource utilization for standalone eMTC

 Support of larger bandwidth
 Multiple HARQ process to further improve UE data throughput
TSG: RAN1 (RAN2 & RAN4)

Further NB-IoT enhancements (RP-162157):

Author: Huawei
Justification: Useful features for NB-IoT are missing from Rel-14
Objective: Specify the following improvements
 TDD support for NB-IoT
 Reduced latency of paging procedure
 SR in the physical layer
 Contention-based access (in licensed UL spectrum)
 Faster RRC release
 Reduced need for IDLE mode UE measurements
 Use of all DL OFDM symbols for all physical channels and signals
 Support multi-carrier operation for (a) standalone anchor with in-
band/guard-band non-anchor and (b) standalone non-anchor with in-
band/guard-band anchor carriers
 A New NB-IoT UE category, support carrier aggregation operation on
up to [8] contiguous NB-IoT carriers.
 Support up to 8 hops between the originating UE and the destination
eNB, all hops over NB-IoT
 Allow the increased time to transfer a IoT message
 Enhancements to the Subscriber Profile ID (SPID) to enable
identification of the requirements of use cases including at least
coverage enhancement, PSM/eDRX, and QoS
 Enable X2/S1 transfer of NB-IoT QCI
TSG: RAN1 (RAN2 & RAN3 & RAN4)

Extended architecture support for Cellular Internet of Things (SP-160830)

Author: Intel
Justification: Execute the normative specifications based on the
conclusion from study phase as documented in TR 23.730
Objective: This WID was approved at SP #73. It is revised here to
include Enhancements to CP Multicast/Broadcast, CP Location services
TSG: SA2

UE Conformance Test Aspects:

NB-IOT (RP-162019): RAN5 reports that the progress on this WID is only 50%,
and target completion data is shifted to June 2017 (RAN#76).

Cat.1 UE with single receiver:

At the New Orleans plenary (RAN#74) Qualcomm submits the proposal as RP-
161898. They look to develop the requirements that allow for a Category 1 UE
with one receiver chain to address the market needs of wearable devices (e.g.
smartwatches). The document is treated, and is revised so that RAN2 is tasked
to discuss how to differentiate the UEs (same capabilities as Category 1 but with
a single receiver) from legacy Category 1 UEs (with two receive chains). The WI
is finally agreed.

At this plenary, RAN2 sends an LS to RAN with the results of their consideration
on differentiating a single receiver Category 1 UE from legacy Category 1 UE.

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LS on Single receiver category 1 UE (RP-161955): In this LS from

RAN2, they inform RAN that RAN2 made the following agreements for
RAN to make a final decision in RAN plenary #74.

1. The following can be reported to RAN to enable them to make a final

decision on the approach to use:
 Both a new UE category and a separate single receiver
capability are feasible options to allow for the network to properly
identify the single receiver UE based on Category 1 for LTE.
 There is no technical difference between the introduction of a
new UE category or single receiver capability.
2. The following can be reported to RAN to enable them to make a final
decision on the release:
 It would be possible to introduce the signalling for the new UE
category or single receiver capability from Rel-9 onwards.
 It would also be possible for the CRs to be introduced from Rel-
14 and state that early implementation is possible.

3.4 Issues of relevance to all business units

External Request for Support
New SI proposal: UL data compression in LTE (RP-162051):
Author: CATT, CMCC, Qualcomm
Justification: Utilization of Uplink resource is increasing. This drives the
need to investigate how to improve Uplink capacity.
Objective: Study to investigate the potential mechanisms to perform
Uplink Data Compression (UDC) between the UE and eNB. (E.g.
Compression Algorithms, Data Formats, De-compression failure rates,
impact to other protocol layers, signaling necessary to support solutions)
TSG: RAN2

WID on UE requirements for network-based CRS mitigation (RP-162062):

Author: Ericsson LM
Justification: Cell-specific Reference Signals (CRSs), are transmitted
using full system bandwidth and in all DL subframes of an LTE radio
frame and independent of the actual load in the network or cell and as
such it causes a considerable interference floor in cellular networks.
Therefor a more efficient use of CRS resources is desired.
Objective: Enhance backwards-compatible network-based CRS
mitigation for LTE using Frame Structure 1 and 2 (i.e. selectively reduce
CRS usage so as to not impact legacy UE’s).
TSG: RAN4

New Work Items for Rel-15

Operation scenarios of 5G V2X (RP-162122):
Author: Qualcomm Korea
Justification: None given
Objective: This study will consider the various areas identified in TR
22.886 (general, platooning, extended sensors, advanced driving, and
remote driving) and will derive the necessary work to identify use cases
and spectrum
TSG: RAN Plenary

5G System Architecture - Phase 1 (SP-160832).

Author: SA2:

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Justification: There is a need to specify a next generation 3GPP system

architecture that is simple, flexible, scalable and extensible enabling both
high overall efficiency for data services with significantly differing traffic
characteristics and high flexibility for deploying networks and network
slices of different characteristics for addressing various users and
services’ needs adequately and efficiently.
Objective: Develop the Stage 2 normative specification of Phase 1 of
the 5G system based on the feature captured in TR 23.799….
 network slicing,
 use of virtual environments,
 service-based architecture,
 network capability exposure,
 support for edge computing,
 access and mobility management,
 session management separate from mobility management,
 (re)selection of efficient user plane path,
 session and service continuity,
 QoS,
 policy framework,
 network discovery and selection,
 network sharing,
 untrusted non-3GPP accesses,
 roaming with EPS,
 interworking with and migration from EPS,
 IMS services (including support for emergency calls),
 Public Warning System (PWS),
 location services as per related service requirements and in
alignment with NG RAN,
 SMS over NAS
TSG: SA2

Rel-15 Work plan:

Discussion on option3 early completion (RP-162215)
Author: KDDI Corporation
Objective: Completing the Rel-15 work within the schedule which
industry demands is essential for 5G success
Proposals:
 RAN set option3 completion target date as Dec 2017. (i.e. not March
2018)
 RAN task RAN WGs to clarify which features are needed for option3,
and report it to RAN#75, so that RAN can arrange the WI schedule
to ensure the early Option3 completion.
 RAN consider to have two Rel-15 schedules of the Technical
Specifications (TS).
1. One is for option3,
2. The other is whole release15 features. RAN consider two
schedules for both NR TS and LTE TS (TS 36.331,
36.306…).

On NR continuation (RP-162123):
Author: Qualcomm Korea
Objective: How to manage NR Studies and Work items for Q2 of 2017
Proposals:
 RAN should expect to approve at least one WID for NR Rel-15
normative work.

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 Company sponsored Studies should be approved on technical merit,

support & consensus as per usual procedures of the RAN plenary.
 RAN should approve a RAN level study to evaluate the suitability of
the 3GPP 5G specifications towards the ITU IMT-2020 submission

Discussion on work and study items for NR in Rel-15 (RP-162175)

Author: Huawei
Objective: How to addresses the organization of Rel-15 NR WI/SI for:
 Features to be specified,
 Features to be studied,
 Timeline of the work/studies
 How to manage work group capacity for Rel-15 NR WI/SI
Proposals:
 Two WID should be approved at NR in March 2017:
o WID for options 3/3a, completion in March 2017
o WID for options 2/4/5/7/a, completion June 2018
 RAN should approve a RAN level study to evaluate the suitability of
the 3GPP 5G specifications towards the ITU IMT-2020 submission
 Company sponsored Studies should be approved such as mMTC,
eV2X, operations above 40Ghz, etc
 The work groups should allocate session time specifically for the two
Rel-15 WI’s and study for IMT-2020 submission. Remaining time can
be allocated to other.

Scope of 5G NR Ph1 Normative Work in RAN (RP-162261):

Author: MediaTek Inc.
Objective: Scope of RAN1/2 normative work in the Rel-15 timeframe
Proposals:
 For both standalone and non-standalone configurations, work is also
necessary in RAN2 and RAN3 to support connectivity to the 5G Core
in Phase 1 (NG2/NG3)
 The feature set in Phase-1 to include only essential aspects of NR
 Non-essential aspect of NR should be deemed as a potential
candidate for being deferred to Phase-2.

NR WI Timeline Outlook (RP-162271):

Author: Nokia Germany
Objective: How to complete the NR study by March of 2017
Proposals:
 No new WI/ SI are approved for either LTE or NR at RAN#74
 No new SI related to NR should start until current NR study is done.
 RAN2 should allocate 5 days of meeting time to NR in 2017.

LTE UE capabilities/FGIs/IoT bits/UE categories:

Introduction of new Transport Block Size for DL 256QAM (RP-162000):
Author: Qualcomm Incorporated
Discussion: In RAN1 #77 and #78 the Transport Block Size (TBS) and
related parameters were decided for DL 256QAM. However the
maximum data rate achievable by 256QAM is not aligned with that
achievable with 64QAM. QC raised this issue at RAn#73 that a new TBS
should be introduced to improve the peak data rate, and it was decide
that RAN1 should further discuss the issue. At the last RAN1 meeting it

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was concluded that: “There was no consensus on the usefulness of the

new TBS”.
Objective: Qualcomm provides a discussion on the introduction of new
alternative Transport Block Size for 256QAM that addresses the issues
raised at the last RAN1 meeting.

SMARTER Requirements TS
TR22.886 presented for information at RAN#74 in SP-16xxxx == S1-163454
(Cover page) + S1-163183 (TS): In this SA1 document from the SMARTER
rapporteur (Vodafone) they provide a draft of the TS as 75% completion. One of
the important changes is that SA1 adds text to the SMARTER TS to clarify the
requirement for fixed broadband access related to use of small cells and router
hubs. The intent of this is to add a requirement that a Home eNB supports
multiple access types, including fixed broadband. We expect the SMARTER TS
to be completed by SA1 in the next Qtr, and final agreement on this TS to be
taken at next plenary in March 2017.

4. Next Steps
 Discussion with CATT (CMCC and QC) regarding their request to Sharp for support of their
SI proposal on UL data compression in LTE (RP-162051):
 Discussion with Ericsson regarding their request to Sharp for support of their WID on UE
requirements for network-based CRS mitigation (RP-162062

5. Schedules for future meetings

 RP75 and SP75, March 06-10, 2016 (Dubrovnik, Croatia)
 RP76 and SP76, June 05 – 09, 2017 (TBC, USA)
 RP77 and SP77, September 11 – 15, 2017 (Sapporo, Japan)
 RP78 and SP78, December 18-22, 2017 (Lisbon, Portugal)

End of report

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