Propelling 5G Forward – Release 16: A closer look

Propelling 5G Forward – A closer look at Release 16.

3GPP Release 16 elevates 5G to the next level. New capabilities, efficiencies, flexibilities, deployments, and spectrum types/bands.

Enhancing 5G NR massive MIMO performance.

Release 16 MIMO Enhancements – Improving performance, efficiency, reliability

Enhanced multi-user MIMO

Reducing overhead and supporting Rank 4 MIMO, finer

quantization and PMI2 granularity by improving Type II CSI3

Multi-transmission/reception points

Improving reliability by allowing device to transmit and receive4 data to/from multiple base stations

Better multi-beam management

Supporting secondary cell beam failure recovery, interference-aware beam selection, overhead reduction

Improved power efficiency

Reducing PAPR (peak-to-average ratio) with improved uplink and downlink reference signal5

Extended uplink coverage

Achieving full-power uplink for all MIMO capable devices

Further enhancing device power efficiency.

Wakeup signal (WUS)

A low-power control channel to indicate activity or lack thereof in the corresponding DRX1 period

Enhanced cross-slot scheduling

Such as introducing explicit minimum scheduling offset parameter and better support for BWP2 switching

Low-power carrier aggregation control

Efficient activation and deactivation of secondary cell is controlled by the primary cell

Rel-16 new power saving techniques

Also standardized power model and evaluation methodology

Low power mode groups

Carriers can be configured with different DRX duration (e.g., shorter active time for mmWave vs. sub-7 GHz)

Device-assisted power saving

Devices can request preferred power saving parameters (e.g., DRX, # of carriers, max bandwidth)

Adaptive MIMO layer reduction

Supporting turning off transmit/receive chains (e.g., from 4 to 2) to save power

Propelling 5G Forward

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