June 23, 2016

Four new Technical Reports from 3GPP SA1 outline the New Services and Markets Technology Enablers (SMARTER) for next generation mobile telecommunications. All four were approved at the recent 3GPP SA#72 meeting, which now clears the way for the subsequent normative specification work to begin.

The Study started in 2015, with the identification of potential 5G use cases, resulting in TR22.891 which contains more than 70 different use cases. These use cases have been categorized in to different groups; massive Internet of Things, Critical Communications, enhanced Mobile Broadband, and Network Operation – which are also the titles of the four Technical Reports (TR): TR 22.861: FS_SMARTER – massive Internet of Things

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*Massive Internet of Things * focuses on use cases with massive number of devices (e.g., sensors and wearables). This group of use cases is particularly relevant to the new vertical services, such as smart home and city, smart utilities, e-Health, and smart wearables.

TR 22.862: FS_SMARTER – Critical Communications

The main areas where improvements are needed for Critical Communications are latency, reliability, and availability to enable, for example, industrial control applications and tactile Internet. These requirements can be met with an improved radio interface, optimized architecture, and dedicated core and radio resources.

TR 22.863: FS_SMARTER – enhanced Mobile Broadband

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*Enhanced Mobile Broadband * includes a number of different use case families related to higher data rates, higher density, deployment and coverage, higher user mobility, devices with highly variable user data rates, fixed mobile convergence, and small-cell deployments.

TR 22.864: FS_SMARTER – Network Operation

The use case group Network Operation addresses the functional system requirements, including aspects such as: flexible functions and capabilities, new value creation, migration and interworking, optimizations and enhancements, and security.

3GPP SA1 is now starting to consolidate the four Technical Reports into a single Technical Specification with normative Stage 1 requirements for next generation mobile telecommunications, guiding the work of the Stage 2 and Stage 3 groups in 3GPP.

A draft version of this specification is expected to be available in December 2016; an approved version is planned for March 2017.

Meanwhile, other Working Groups can use these four SMARTER Technical Reports as input for their studies into next generation mobile telecommunications.