The present document provides a summary of each 3GPP Release 17 Feature, and more generally of all Work Items for which a summary has been estimated to be useful.
These summaries are based on the inputs issued by the Work Item Rapporteurs, sometimes modified by the Work Plan manager to ensure overall consistency of this document. The original inputs can be retrieved as temporary document (tdoc). The original tdoc number is provided just below the table of each clause.
The present document presents the "current status" of the Features introduced in Release 17, i.e. as they are by the time of publication of this document. Each Feature can be modified or enhanced, over several years, by the means of Change Requests (CRs).
The list of all the Change Requests related to a Work Item can be retrieved by selecting "TSG Status = Approved" in the Work Item page of the 3GPP Portal at:
https://portal.3gpp.org/ChangeRequests.aspx?q=1&workitem= [6-digit identifier of the Work Item, separated by a coma if several Work Items]
For example, for "NR support for high speed train scenario": the table at the beginning of its section indicates that the corresponding Work Items have the numbers 840192 and 840292. So, all the CRs related to this Feature are retrieved by selecting "TSG Status = Approved" in https://portal.3gpp.org/ChangeRequests.aspx?q=1&workitem=840192,840292
The present document provides a summary of each Release 17 Feature or, whenever needed, of each significant Work Item.
The information provided in the present document is limited to an overview of each Feature, explaining briefly its purpose and the main lines of the system's behaviour to execute the Feature.
The present document presents the "initial state" of the Features introduced in Release 17, i.e. as they are by the time of publication of the present document. Each Feature is subject to be later modified or enhanced, over several years, by the means of Change Requests (CRs). It is therefore recommended to retrieve all the CRs which relate to the given Feature, as explained in Annex C, to further outline a feature at a given time.
The following documents contain provisions which, through reference in this text, constitute provisions of the present document.
References are either specific (identified by date of publication, edition number, version number, etc.) or non-specific.
For a specific reference, subsequent revisions do not apply.
For a non-specific reference, the latest version applies. In the case of a reference to a 3GPP document (including a GSM document), a non-specific reference implicitly refers to the latest version of that document in the same Release as the present document.
For the purposes of the present document, the terms given in TR 21.905 and the following apply. A term defined in the present document takes precedence over the definition of the same term, if any, in TR 21.905.
For the purposes of the present document, the abbreviations given in TR 21.905 and the following apply.
An abbreviation defined in the present document takes precedence over the definition of the same abbreviation, if any, in TR 21.905. Abbreviations specific to a given clause are provided in the clause they appear.
KPI
Release 17 is dedicated to consolidate and enhance the concepts and functionalities introduced in the previous Releases, while introducing a small number of brand new Features.
The improvements relate to all the key areas of the previous Releases: services to the industry (the "verticals"), including positioning, private network, etc.; improvements for several aspects of 5G supporting Internet of Things (IoT), both in the Core Network and in the Access Network, of proximity (direct) communications between mobiles, in particular in the context of autonomous driving (V2X), in several media aspects of the user plane related to the entertainment industry (codec, streaming, broadcasting) and also of the support of Mission Critical communications. Furthermore, a number of network functionalities have been improved, e.g. for slicing, traffic steering and Edge-computing.
The Radio interface and the Access Network have been significantly improved too (MIMO, Repeaters, 1024QAM modulation for downlink, etc.). While most of the improvements target 5G/NR radio access (or are access-agnostic), some improvements are dedicated to 4G/LTE access. Such improvements are clearly identified in the title and in the chapters where they appear.
As for the new Features, the main new Feature of this Release is the support of satellite access, and a dedicated chapter covers this topic.
Note that the classifications, groupings and order of appearance of the Features in this document reflect a number of choices by the editor as there is no "3GPP endorsement" for classification/order. This Executive Summary has also been written by the editor and represents his view.