Latency Analysis for IMT-2020 Radio Interface Technology Evaluation

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the latency of 5G NR for IMT-2020 using simulations, highlighting minor differences from official reports and discussing potential reasons for these discrepancies.

Contribution

It presents a detailed latency analysis of 5G NR using a custom simulator, providing insights into differences from official specifications and assumptions involved.

Findings

Latency parameters show minor differences from 3GPP reports.

Differences are more pronounced in TDD mode.

The study discusses possible reasons for observed discrepancies.

Abstract

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is currently deliberating on the finalization of candidate radio interface technologies (RITs) for IMT-2020 (International Mobile Telecommunications) suitability. The candidate technologies are currently being evaluated and after a couple of ITU-Radiocommunication sector (ITU-R) working party (WP) meetings, they will become official. Although, products based on the candidate technology from 3GPP (5G new radio (NR)) is already commercial in several operator networks, the ITU is yet to officially declare it as IMT-2020 qualified. Along with evaluation of the 3GPP 5G NR specifications, our group has evaluated many other proponent technologies. 3GPP entire specifications were examined and evaluated through simulation using Matlab and using own developed simulator which is based on the Go-language. The simulator can evaluate complete 5G NR performance using the IMT-2020 evaluation framework. In this work, we are presenting latency parameters which has shown some minor differences from the 3GPP report. Especially, for time division duplexing (TDD) mode of operation, the differences are observed. It might be possible that the differences are due to assumptions made outside the scope of the evaluation. However, we considered the worst case parameter. Although, the report is submitted to ITU but it is also important for the research community to understand why the differences and what were the assumptions in scenario for which differences are observed.