Description
The objective of this activity is to develop the software protocol stack for Release 18 enhancements related to 5G New for Radio (NR) for Non-Terrestrial Networks. The software protocol stack development shall be based on a testbed considering both the User Equipment (UE) and g-NodeB (gNB) features and operational procedures.Targeted Improvements:Enable 5G NR NTN system performance simulations with the latest Release 18 modifications.Description:The 5th generation of wireless broadband networks (5G) promised a new paradigm in communications, offering higher transmission rates, more Internet of Things (IoT) and internet application connections, high reliability, very low latency, and Objective: The activity aims at the development of new functions in the protocol stack, in support of voice calls using the latest NTN NB-IoT waveform. The activity shall select the most promising voice encoder/decoder technology and shall demonstrate its fixability over a NB-IoT communication link via satellite.Targeted Improvements: Enrich the portfolio of satellite services supported with the NB-IoT technology.Description:With the endorsement of the Release 17 NTN NB-IoT specifications from the 3GPP community, new satellite services are recently announced based on this M2M/IoT technology. Currently, these services are intended only for short messaging and positioning information in the context of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) applications. Onthe other hand, relatively broadband type of services supported by the 5G NR standard is difficult to be initiated at the satelliteL-/S- band, due to the limited capabilities of the current legacy systems and the need for dedicated non-geostationary satellite constellations. Looking at Voice-over-IP (VoIP) services, the latest AMR (Adaptive Multi-Rate) codec works with variable bit rates ranging from 4.75 to 12.2kbps, and with 20ms data arriving interval among the data packets. Consequently, it is of interest to evaluate the adoption of the NB-IoT standard to support voice calls in satellite networks. The activity shall therefore undertake the following steps: a) Review the latest 3GPP specifications for the NTN scenario (i.e., Release 18) and the identified solutions for satellite coverage enhancements; b) Given the current state-of-the-art AMR codec, design and develop the new functions in the protocol stack of both UE and gNB to support VoIP services for NGSO satellite networks; c) Thorough laboratory validation.