India’s Ascent up the 5G Ladder

PROF. KIRAN KUCHI

I IT HYDERABAD

Outline of the Talk

•Current India perspective

• India’s contributions at 3GPP, ITU and TSDSI-RIT

•5G R&D at IITH – Some demos

•Q/A

2

India Scenario

• 5G, IoT Technology ownership and control is critical to

National interest

• Enhancing Current R&D capabilities – domestic manufacturing

and export oriented

• Big thrust on IP/IPR creation

• Influence standards - Alignment of Global requirements with

India’s needs

• TSDSI/3GPP/ITU

3

What’s Unique about India’s Mobile Telephony

• Mobile Broadband (MBB) is the prime source of internet access in India

• 80% of internet traffic generated by Mobile phones

• Voice users: 64 crore Urban Vs 50 crore rural users

Source: TRAI report

Source: TRAI report

4

What’s Unique about India’s Mobile Telephony

• 11 Gb per month average data consumption per smart phone – Highest in the world

• Cheapest rates in the world

• Spectrum for 4G: TD-LTE 20 MHz/operator, 4G primary work horse

• 5G spectrum at 3.5 GHz, 60-100 Mhz operator?

• MBB being prime source of internet, reliable indoor coverage key especially in 5G bands

• 5G urban cells smaller than 4G,

• 5G Rural cells larger than 4G

• Urban and Indian rural different set of requirements

Source: TRAI Report

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What’s next in IoT

• Indian operators to launch Nation-wide NB-IoT services

• Smart metering gaining significant traction

• EESL deployed 1.2 Million electricity meters.

• DISCOMs were able to generate 95% billing efficiency during COVID

• 15-20% average increase in revenue/customer

• Wrt IoT, we are just scratching the surface, whole lot of new applications on the unveil

• Video surveillance will be a prime application for 5G NR-based IoT modems

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India Rural Scenario

• For the first time, India has more rural net users

than urban Indian – ToI

• Rural settings are quite important (especially

after COIVD-19)

• Significant investments will be made in this space

Internet in Indian Rural Scenario

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Bharat Net – A Quick Glance!

• Project cost: 45,000 crore INR

• Fiber to reach all 2.5 Lakh Gram Panchayat’s

(GP) in India

• Length of fiber laid till date

• 4.45 Lakh Km

• Fiber laid and equipment connected till date

• 1.4 Lakh GPs

• Number of WiFi APs planned to be installed

• 1Lakh

• WiFi an interim solution –

• 5G to address last mile connectivity at GP

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Basic Architecture

Gram

Panchayat

Village

Village

VillageVillage

BS at the GP should

serve the nearby villages

1. Cell radius

2. UE height

3. Mobility model

4. Target edge/average cell spectral efficiency

Important configuration parameters

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Fig. courtesy: Prof. Ganti, IITM

Distribution of the Distance between Villages and their Closest Gram Panchayat

• Radius of 3 Km (ISD = 3√𝟑 = 5.19 Km)

• Covers only 60% of the villages

• Radius of 3.46 Km, (ISD = 3.46√𝟑 = 6 Km)

• Covers only 68% of the villages,

• Radius of 6 Km, (ISD = 𝟔√𝟑 = 10.3 Km)

• Covers 95% of the villages

The GP and village list was obtained from the government website http://lgdirectory.gov.in/.

ISD: Inter Site Distance, R: Radius

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Fig. courtesy: Prof. Ganti, IITM

Status of current technologies – story until 2018

• Till IMT-2020, ITU did not have a rural use case that suited to rural needs of developing countries.

• Hence, the IMT advanced technology development (such as 4G LTE) did not meet rural requirements in

countries like India.

• Recall the GP distribution shown earlier

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India’s Journey at 3GPP

Indian 5G Contributions at 3GPP

• IITH@3GPP

• 200+ TDOCs: NB-IoT and 5G NR Rel 15/16/17

• Partners: IITM, CEWiT, Reliance Jio, Tejas Networks

• A new waveform “pi/2 BPSK with spectrum shaping” introduced to enhance cell edge coverage

• Almost constant envelope signal, drives PA right at saturation point, 3 dB additional power compared to

QPSK DFT-S-OFDM, and up to 5-db gain compared to CP-OFDM

• 5G NR Rel-17 “Coverage Enhancement”

• Massive MIMO/Cell-free MIMO push at 3GPP continues

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India’s Journey at ITU

Defines xG

• Established: 1865

• UN agency

• Spectrum harmonisation

3G

IMT-2000

4G

IMT-Adv

5G

IMT-2020

Ratified in WRC and signed by all the countries

10 years 10 years

16

17

3GPP Organizational Partners

• Defines requirements

• Partnership between 7 SDOs

• TSDSI Standards

3GPP, TSDSI and ITU

Fig. courtesy: Qualcomm

LMLC and TSDSI RITNote: There are two parallel tracks here1. Prof. Ganti, IITM led the technical effort at ITU WP 5D with background technical support from IITH, CEWIT. Additional supporters include: Tejas Networks, CDOT, RJIO. TSDSI secretariat and DOT instrumental in garnering multi-country support etc.2. 3GPP 5G NR specification efforts primarily led by Prof. Kuchi, IITH and Dr. Klutto Milleth, CEWiT since 2015. Additional supporters include: IITM, Tejas Networks, RJIO. Meity, DOT provided the R&D funding, and TSDSI secretariat offered additional organizational support

Basic architecture

Gram

Panchayat

Village

Village

VillageVillage

BS at the GP should

serve the nearby villages

1. Cell radius

2. UE height

3. Mobility model

4. Target edge/average cell spectral efficiency

Important configuration parameters

Target cell radius is minimum 6Km

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Fig. courtesy: Prof. Ganti, IITM

ITU Mandatory Requirements for IMT 2020

• A RIT/SRIT should fulfil the TPR of all the test-environments

• The TPR for a test-environment is fulfilled if it is fulfilled for one of the test configurations

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Low Mobility Large Cell Configuration

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Low Mobility Large Cell Configuration Evaluation Criteria

NOTE 1: This requirement applies to Macro TRxP layer of the Dense Urban – eMBB environment as described in ITU-R M.[IMT-2020.EVAL].

The performance requirement for Rural-eMBB is also applicable to Rural-eMBB LMLC (Low Mobility Large Cell) which is one of the evaluation

configurations under the Rural- eMBB test environment. The details (e.g. 8 km inter-site distance) can be found in Report ITU-R M.[IMT2020.EVAL].

Report ITU-R M.2411-0(11/2017)Requirements, evaluation criteria andsubmission templates for thedevelopment of IMT-2020

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eMBB mMTC URLLC

Indoor Hotspot

eMBB

Dense Urban

eMBB

Rural

eMBB

ITU Evaluation

ScenariosUrban

macro

mMTC

Urban

macro

URLLCTest Environments

Config A

4 GHz

Config B

30 GHz

Config C

70 GHz

Config A

4 GHz (1 layer)

Config B

30 GHz (1 layer)

Config C

4/30 GHz (2 layer)

Config A

700 MHz

ISD 1.732km

120/500 km/h

Config B

4 GHz

ISD 1.732km

120/500 km/h

LMLC

700 MHz

ISD 6km

30 km/h

Config A

ISD 500m

Config B

ISD 1.732 km

Config A

4 GHz

Config B

700 MHz

Test ConfigurationsTPR are defined for

the Test Environments

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TSDSI RIT

3GPP 5G standard

IndianEnhancements

To address Indian needs

Technical studies done and accepted in TSDSI

TSDSI RIT cleared step-7 ITU WP5D

One of the key element of TSDSI RIT is “pi/2 BPSK with spectrum shaping” waveform – aimed at LMLC coverage expansion

Pi/2 BPSK waveform expected to be supported in India mandatorily by gNB and UE starting with Rel-16

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TSDSI RIT cleared step-7 of 8 step process at ITU-R

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5G R&D at IITH

Building end to end 5G Test Bed- A collaborative project

IITMIITB IITH

IISc

IITD

IITK

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Massive MIMO Testbed

First Massive MIMO demo in 2017

Design and Experimentally Validate PHY Algos, Linear Vs Non-linear precoder, Large antenna arrays: 12-48 layers

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Cell-free MIMO Demonstration

Indoor Cell-free Massive MIMO demo conducted at IITH in 2016

Submitted as a candidate for 3GPP Rel-15/16/17 WI, proposal yet to gain traction

BS1

BS3BS2

UE1

UE2

UE3

• RRHs distributed inside 4th floor of IITH campus

• RRHs connected by fiber to a baseband cloud (pool of DSPs)

• One UE/RRH, full BW allocation, reuse-1

• Spectrum-efficiency (SE)/UE recorded for:

• TD-LTE PHY and Cell-free MIMO PHY

• CDF of SE shown here for 6 distributed RRHs in a cloud

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Recent 5G-ORAN Demos @IITH

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ORAN Based 5G demos

gNB architecture for Split 8

• FAPI encoder and decoder compliant with Rel-10 small cell forum specifications.

• The PHY block includes:

• All DL and UL PHY channels

• Master L1 controller controlling each of the PHY IP’s through individual component controllers.

• FFT and IFFT IPs from Xilinx

• LDPC and Polar IPs from Xilinx

• Cyclic Prefix addition and removal blocks.

• Resource Block mapper and de-mapper for DL and UL channels respectively.

• Time and frequency domain de-mapping a multi-sub carrier spacing system (e.g. PRACH).

gNB architecture for Split 7.2x

• All features supported in Split 8

• Block floating point compression and decompression on DU and RU

• ORAN CUS plane support

• PTP synchronization.

FAPI CODEC

PHY

FAPI CODEC

PHYORAN +

DU Handler

RU Handler

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5G Base Station: Demo-1

Setup Description:

DL frame transmitted from ZCU 111 RFSOC

1. SSB, 1 SSB in 5 ms half frame, 10ms periodicity

2. PDCCH, 2 symbols

3. PDSCH, 64 QAM

R&S decodes the downlink Tx frame

DL Tx PHY IP

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5G Base Station: Demo-2

ORAN CU Plane + Basic S-Plane demo

DU RU

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5G Base Station and UE: Demo-3

gNB

ZCU 111 RFSOC

SSBTx

PDSCHTx

PUSCH Rx

UE

ZCU 111 RFSOC

SSBRx

PDSCHRx

PUSCH Tx

• Demonstration: 3.35 GHz RF band, Max data rates 2.4 Gbps

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5G NR BS and UE Demo setup

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ORAN Compliant L2/L3 gNB and UE Stack

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Protocol Stack

MAC

RLC

PHY Radio

Protocol Stack

UE

NASFramework

PDCP

SDAP

RRC

UE gNB 5GC

3rd Party Part of Protocol Stack

MAC

RLC

PHY Radio

Protocol Stack

gNB

Framework

PDCP

SDAP

RRC

Interfaces

Wired with SFP+ Ports Wired with SFP+ Ports- 3GPP Rel-15 Compliant L2L3 for both gNB

& UE

- UE and gNB are wire connected [Phy&Radio

are being bypassed]

- Abstracted/Dummy Physical Layer is being

used

- gNB’s max throughput: 10Gbps, round-trip

latency sub 1ms

- Current Reference Platform: x86, 6 Core,

3.2GHz

- Stack with C-Code with ARM & x86

Compatibility

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gNB Protocol Stack[5G NR L2/L3]: Overview

AMF

SMF

UPFRLC

RRC SDAP

PDCP-UPDCP-C

MAC

HIGH PHY

RLC

MAC

HIGH PHY

LOW PHY

RF

LOW PHY

RF

CU

DU DU

RU RU

CU-CP

CU-UP

NG-UE1

F1-C F1-U

5GC

NG-C

- Stack that supports co-located sub-layers as

well as distributed [DU-CU split]

- Currently supports most of the mandatory

features

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gNB L2/L3 Modules

SDAP

PDCP

RLC

MAC

RRC

QoS Flow Mapping

Segmentation

Ciphering De-Ciphering Integrity Protection

PDCP DuplicationRoHC

Reassembly

SchedulerChannel

Multiplexing De-Multiplexing L1-L2 Interface

ARQTM/UM/AM

Entities

HARQPriority

HandlingLogical Channel

Mapping

ConfigMgmt

Measurement Mgmt

NAS Encap/Decap

MobilitySecurity

Interfaces NG-C NG-U Xn E1 F1-C F1-U

RB Mgmt

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UE L2/L3 Modules

SDAP

PDCP

RLC

MAC

RRC

Reflective Mapping (UE)

Segmentation

Ciphering De-Ciphering Integrity Protection

PDCP DuplicationRoHC

Reassembly

Channel Multiplexing

De-Multiplexing L1-L2 Interface

ARQ TM/UM/AM Entities

HARQ

Priority Handling

Logical Channel Mapping

ConfigMgmt

Measurement UE Procedures

MobilitySecurity

NAS MobilitySessionMgmt

NAS Security

Registration

41

Demonstration of 5G NR Protocol Stack

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• Demo of 5G NR Stack:• 5G NR Stack Demonstration on x86, 9 Gbps support• gNB to UE stack-to-stack communication• 3rd party core

NB-IoT SoC

KEY DESIGN DIFFERENTIATORS, APPLICATION DIAGRAM

•Operates from single battery supply

•On SoC RF for both NB-IoT and GNSS

•Powerful DSP processing capabilities

•Advanced Power Management

•Supply capabilities for sensor hub and eSIM

•SOC tapeout in Q4 2020

The NB-IOT SOC

NB-IoT SoC

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Summary

•Leading 5G IP creation, in shaping the domestic 5G ecosystem

•Credible impact on the global stage

• Indigenous 5G development likely to speed up in the near term

• IITH R&D funding agencies: Meity since 2011, and DOT since

2018

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