An Overview of the 3GPP Study on Artificial Intelligence for 5G New Radio

In this article, we address a critical gap within the existing literature by offering a dedicated treatment of the 3GPP Release-18 study on AI/ML for the NR air interface. This comprehensive contribution enriches the existing works which often confine their scopes to certain areas of the 3GPP study. Furthermore, we also divulge the myriad factors that underpin the process of standardization. Given that the integration of AI/ML within the air interface is a nascent and largely uncharted avenue in the realm of standards development, 3GPP has identified many new challenges and gained novel perspectives during this study. Conveying these learnings from the front lines of 3GPP helps demystify the decisions and is particularly valuable for researchers not directly involved in the 3GPP work.  

For More Insight Click HERE

Ericsson Green initiative for 5G roll outs, helping Vodafone UK.

Vodafone is rolling out Ericsson's new compact antenna to bring greater 5G capacity, coverage and performance to locations across the U.K.   The Ericsson AIR 3218 combines a radio unit and antenna in a single unit. It can also transmit mobile data over all of the frequencies that Vodafone currently uses in the U.K., without needing additional antenna units, as was the case for previous models.

The combined multiband, Massive MIMO design makes it easier for the operator to add more capacity to a mast without increasing its footprint. It's also easier to mount on rooftops, towers, walls and poles.

"5G is the UK's digital future, but we should never underestimate how difficult it is to deliver a future-proofed network at scale across the length and breadth of the UK. Working in partnership with Ericsson, we are constantly exploring new ways to accelerate this transformation, and this is another example of where innovation is delivered through collaboration," said Ker Anderson, head of Radio and Performance at Vodafone UK, in a statement.

for insight - https://techblog.comsoc.org/2023/07/19/ericssons-new-antenna-helps-accelerate-vodafone-5g-roll-out/ 

What is Milimeter Wave Bands for Next Gen ( 5G and beyond) Wireless Systems

mmmWAVE Bands For Next Gen (5G and Beyonds) Wireless Systems 

Fifth Generation (5G) cellular systems are being designed to communicate over both sub-6 GHz bands (a.k.a. Frequency Range 1) as well as mmWave bands (a.k.a. Frequency Range 2). mmWave spectrum offers abundant bandwidth, which can be used to support multi-Gbps transmission speeds per user. Historically, mmWave bands have been used for fixed/mobile satellite services (FSS/MSS) and local multipoint distribution service (LMDS). Recently, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has opened up nearly 11 GHz of the mmWave spectrum for mobile broadband, aiming to support 5G cellular systems, wireless LANs (e.g., Wi-Gig), and others. The newly allocated bands include licensed bands at 24 GHz (24.25-24.45 GHz and 24.75-25.25 GHz), 28 GHz (27.5-28.35 GHz), 37 GHz (37-38.6 GHz), and 39 GHz (38.6-40 GHz), as well as a new unlicensed band at 64-71 GHz – see Figure 1. Combined with the previously introduced 57-64 GHz unlicensed band, this creates almost 18 GHz of new spectrum for next-generation wireless systems. The FCC is also planning to add 15.8 GHz more spectrum at 31.8-33.4 GHz, 42-42.5 GHz, 47.2-50.2 GHz, 71-76 GHz, and 81-86 GHz bands, along with spectrum above 95 GHz.

                                    

Figure 1: Licensed and unlicensed bands in the mmWave spectrum.

Despite this abundant capacity, RF communications at mmWave frequencies can be quite challenging, due to high propagation losses, poor penetration, blockage, rain sensitivity, etc. At the same time, the smaller wavelengths make it possible to pack tens or even hundreds of antenna elements into a single device (mobile phone, Small base station, or access point). With proper processing of signals fed into these antennas, electronically steerable, highly directional transmissions can be performed. The severe signal attenuation can, thus, be compensated for by the resulting beamforming and spatial reuse gains.

There are several ways to apply beamforming at mmWave frequencies. Fully digital beamforming relies on the availability of several RF chains. A particular precoding vector is multiplied by the modulated baseband signal of a given RF chain. Analog beamforming, on the other hand, can be performed with a single RF chain. It applies the beamforming weights in the RF domain by controlling phase shifters. Finally, in hybrid (analog/digital) beamforming, the signal processing is divided between the analog and digital domains, allowing comparable performance to digital beamforming but with fewer RF chains. The low power consumption of the analog beamforming makes it a desirable architecture, especially for the user equipment (UE).

--

Saurabh Verma

Chief Tech Consultant & Founder

Fundarc Communication (xgnlab)

Noida, India - 201301

M:+91-7838962939/9654235169

saurabhverma@xgnlab.com

www.xgnlab.com

What is CD-SSB in 5G NR?

To access an NR network, a UE needs to carry out initial access functionality which includes cell search and random access. To enable the UE to acquire DL time and frequency synchronization, an SS consisting of the primary SS (PSS) and the secondary SS (SSS) is periodically transmitted in the DL of each cell. After synchronization, the UE can decode the physical broadcast channel (PBCH) which carries the master information block (MIB) that the UE needs to decode in order to receive the remaining system information broadcast by the network. In NR, the PSS, SSS, and PBCH are jointly referred to as SS block (SSB) which occupies 20 resource blocks (RBs). After decoding the PBCH, the UE can move forward to decode the system information block type 1 (SIB1) which contains the system information that the UE needs to know before accessing the network. For example, SIB1 contains information about random access configuration that the UE needs in order to carry out random access procedure. Since the SSB has an associated SIB1 transmission, it is referred to as cell-defining SSB (CD-SSB).  

verizon pvt 5G strategy for industry 4.0

Today Verizon Business announced its new private 5G network offering, On Site 5G, which is being marketed to large enterprises and public sector customers. When combined with related technologies like the internet of things, mobile edge computing, and machine learning/artificial intelligence, private 5G networks are being billed as part and parcel of powering broad enterprise digital transformation and enabling the Industry 4.0 era.

for more insight 

https://www.rcrwireless.com/20210610/5g/verizon-business-chief-revenue-officer-talks-private-5g-network-offering?utm_campaign=Enterprise%20IoT%20Newsletter&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=132955126&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_TIa1A5Rz-l2BtDzK41Mxc4-y7PaQG_YY8lFbU_vOQ6qnLS3nB-rynHdpPvdJLYcpVvJ0XM0lMdz0nRevso0bHzhSRJA&utm_content=132955126&utm_source=hs_email

Thanks & Warm Regards

Fundarc Communication (xgnlab)

SME-WG EU 5GPPP NetWorld2020

CSI-RS Classification and Role - 5G NR

Channel-State Information -Reference Signal channel state information, is very important for improving the overall performance of the wireless system. After obtaining the CSI information, the base station can schedule MCS according to the channel quality, RB resource allocation, beam assignment to improve the rate, multi-user multiplexing MU MIMO, etc.

Nice Article Here 

https://forum.huawei.com/enterprise/en/introduction-to-5g-5g-nr-system-csi-rs-signal/thread/733957-100305

5G- Beam forming, Beam Steering, and MIMO - simplified.

Due to the high propagation loss of the millimeter wavelengths (mmWaves) employed in 5G new radio (5G NR) systems, plus the high bandwidth demands of users, beamforming techniques and massive Multiple Input and Multiple Output (MIMO) are critical for increasing spectral efficiencies and  providing cost-effective, reliable coverage.

Read in Full 

https://www.metaswitch.com/knowledge-center/reference/what-is-beamforming-beam-steering-and-beam-switching-with-massive-mimo

WBA OpenRoaming - An ubiquitous WiFi experience across the world

What is OpenRoaming?

At its core, OpenRoaming attempts to make moving around a wireless world a seamless experience. The standards body connects access providers, with identifying providers and service providers to build out their technology vision. As with all standards, there will be add-ons that provide additional value, at additional cost, which is a primary incentive for vendors to play. Cisco, for instance, will be offering DNA Spaces for OpenRoaming that includes user experience and analytics components.

OpenRoaming will require cross-industry adoption, migration away from all of the proprietary solutions. While it offers long-term benefits to the suppliers of WiFi who have to do the work of migration, the benefits really reside in the end-user value.

The benefits promised by OpenRoaming include:

• Higher quality of service
• No need to track or switch among SSIDs
• A single log-on experience
• Business incentives, primarily through simplicity, to adopters
• Ease of regulatory compliance
• Passive authentication

Get into full. 

https://www.seriousinsights.net/wireless-broadband-alliance-openroaming-initiative-needs-to-focus-on-adoption/

5G Race, from marketing stunt to political mileage.

Almost since 5G first grabbed the industry's attention, US telcos have been crowing about their investment in the next-generation mobile standard. And, rightly or wrongly, an impression has taken hold that America is a frontrunner in the 5G race. Only this week, a report from Arthur D. Little, a respected consultancy, ranked the US just behind South Korea in its new 5G country leadership index (see below). Other commentators point to major equipment deals for Ericsson and Nokia, and enthusiastic announcements about 5G launches, as evidence of the US position.

But it's all just marketing flimflam, according to one of the UK's top executives involved in the rollout of 5G technology. Light Reading spoke with Scott Petty, the chief technology officer of Vodafone UK, on the sidelines of a press briefing in London this week, and his verdict on claims of US 5G leadership was damning. "Only the Chinese are ahead of the UK. The US is miles behind," Petty told Light Reading. "They are making it up. They are rebadging 4G Evolution as 5G."

Source: Arthur D. Little.

This would seem like chest-thumping for the UK telecom sector were it not for the fact that US boasts have never quite made sense.

For one thing, the 5G equipment vendor that just about every non-US telecom executive thinks of as the world's best -- China's Huawei -- is effectively barred from doing business with the main US operators. Elsewhere, even telcos ripping out Huawei's equipment, or promising not to use its 5G products, rank it ahead of Ericsson and Nokia. How can a country that excludes the world's "only true 5G vendor," in the words of BT's Neil McRae, be a 5G leader?

Very nicely put, get full article HERE

Akraino Edge Stack from Linux Edge Linux fundation

Akraino Edge Stack, a Linux Foundation project initiated by AT&T and Intel, intends to develop a fully integrated edge infrastructure solution, and the project is completely focused towards Edge Computing.  This open source software stack provides critical infrastructure to enable high performance, reduce latency, improve availability, lower operational overhead, provide scalability, address security needs, and improve fault management.  The Akraino community will address multiple edge use cases and industry, not just Telco Industry. Akraino community intends to develop solution and support of carrier, provider, and the IoT networks.  

AT&T's seed code will enable carrier-scale edge computing applications to run in virtual machines and containers.  AT&T’s contributions, which will include support for 5G, IoT, and other networking edge services will enhance reliability and enable high performance. 

Intel upstreamed Wind River Titanium Cloud portfolio of technologies to open source in support of additional blueprints in Akraino. 

The Akraino Edge Stack Community, while embracing several existing open source projects, will continue the focus on the following Community Goal: 

▪          Faster Edge Innovation - Focused group facilitating faster innovation, incorporating hardware acceleration, software-defined networking, and other emerging capabilities into a modern Edge stack.

▪          End-to-End Ecosystem - Definition and certification of H/W stacks, configurations, and Edge VNFs. 

▪          User Experience - Address both operational and user use cases. 

▪          Seamless Edge Cloud Interoperability- Standard to interoperate across multiple Edge Clouds. 

▪          Provide End to End Stack- End to end integrated solution with demonstrable use cases. 

▪          Use and Improve Existing Open Source - Maximize the use of existing industry investments while developing and up-streaming enhancements, avoiding further fragmentation of the ecosystem. 

▪          Support Production-Ready Code - Security established by design and supports full life-cycle.

Akraino is a complementary opensource project, and interfaces with the existing projects namely Acumos AI, Airship, Ceph, DANOS, EdgeX Foundry, Kubernetes, LF Networking, ONAP, OpenStack, and StarlingX.

Emerging Technologies

As highlighted in the Introduction section, there are several emerging technologies such as, (Refer to the picture below)

• Telco NFV Edge Infrastructure -  Running cloud infrastructure at the network edge allows for the virtualization of applications key to running 5G mobility networks at a larger scale, density and lower cost using commodity hardware. In addition this infrastructure can also enable the virtualization of wireline services, Enterprise IP services and even supports the virtualization of client premises equipment. This reduces the time to provision new services for customers and even, in some cases, allows those customers to self-provision their service changes.
  
  
• Autonomous devices - Drones, Autonomous Vehicles, Industry Robots and such customer devices require a lot of compute processing power in order to support video processing, analytics and etc., Edge computing enables above-said devices to offload the computing processing to the Edge within the needed latency limit.
  
• Immersive Experiences - Devices like Virtual Reality (VR) headsets and Augmented Reality applications on user’s mobile devices also require extremely low levels of latency to prevent lag that would degrade their user experience. To ensure this experience is optimal, placing computing resources close to the end user to ensure the lowest latencies to and from their devices is critical.
  
  
• IoT & Analytics - Emerging technologies in the Internet of Things (IoT) demands lower latencies and accelerated processing at the edge.

To ensure timely information arrives for data-driven decisions for manufacturing and shipping businesses, edge computing is also beneficial. Receiving and processing this data at the edge allows more timely decision making leading to better business outcomes.

Network Edge - Optimal Zone for Edge Placement

The processing power demands of customer devices, namely AR/VR, Drones, and Autonomous Vehicles are ever increasing and require very low latency, typically measured in milliseconds.  The place where processing takes place plays a major role with respect to quality of user experience and cost of ownership.  Centralized cloud decreases the TCO, but fails to address the low latency requirement.  Placement at customer premises is nearly impossible with respect to cost and infrastructure.  Considering the cost, low latency, and high processing power requirements, the best available option is to utilize the existing infrastructure like Telco’s tower, central offices, and other Telco real estates.  These will be the optimal zones for the edge placement.

Akraino Edge Stack

The Akraino Edge Stack is a collection of multiple blueprints. Blueprints are the declarative configuration of entire stack i.e., Cloud platform, API, and Applications. Intend of Akraino Edge Stack is to support VM, container and bare metal workloads.  Akraino is a complimentary OpenSource project and it is intended to use upstream community work in addition to the software development within the Akraino community. 

A typical service provider will have thousands of Edge sites. These Edge sites could be deployed at Cell tower, Central offices, and other service providers real estate such as wire centers. End-to-End Edge automation and Zero-Touch provisioning are required to minimize OPEX and meet the requirements for provisioning agility. 

The Akraino Edge Stack is intended to support any type of access methodologies such as Wireless (4G/LTE, 5G), Wireline, Wi-Fi, etc., 

In order to be resilient, Akraino Edge Stack deployment intent to follow the hierarchy of deployments such as collection of central sites that deploy a collection of regional sites. The regional sites that facilitate the deployment of Edge Sites.   For example, the figure below shows the central site C1 and C2 allows the management of regional sites R1, R2, R3, and R4. And regional sites allows the management of Edge Sites which are remote and closer to the users.

Regional sites serve as the controller for Edge sites in their corresponding "Edge Flock". 

To promote the high availability of Edge Cloud services, Akraino regional sites are set up redundantly to overcome site failures. 

Get in Details HERE