Evolution of Mission Critical and Reliable Communications technologies, including 1. URLLC PHY Core Design and Implementation -Compact DCI for low BLER -Power-boost approach for Uplink Grant-free pre-emption -Rate-less HARQ to proceed even before ACK/NACK is received -Front load DMRS 2. URLLC PHY Procedure Design and Implementation -Mini-slot based scheduling -eMBB DL preemption with mixed numerology -Self-contained HARQ-ACK feedback 3. URLLC PS design and Implementation -RRM URLLC enhancement, such as low latency SR scheduling -MAC scheduler enhancement for URLLC -Support NR network slicing for URLLC UE with guaranteed QoS Evolution of Mission Critical and Reliable Communications reference design including ‒ Link level simulation platform for rel. 15 URLLC physical layer ‒ Base-station URLLC reference design on C-RAN platform ‒ Terminal URLLC reference design on FPGA/SoC platform Notes: URLLC: Ultra-Reliable and low Latency Communications C-RAN: Cloud/centralized RAN (radio access network) FPGA: field-programmable gate array SoC: System on Chip eMBB: enhanced mobile broadband RRM: Radio Resource Management DMRS: demodulation reference signal HARQ: Hybrid automatic repeat request
ENEA Software AB [Sponsor]
Fujian Sunnada Network Technology Co. Ltd [Sponsor]
HeBei FarEast Communication System Engineering Co., Ltd. (Licensing) [Sponsor]
Nantong Research Institute for Advanced Communication Technologies (Licensing) [Sponsor]
Rohde & Schwarz Hong Kong Limited [Sponsor]
Mission critical and reliable system is a system whose failure may result in the failure of some goal-directed activities. The evolution of mission critical and reliable communication systems requires a robust wireless communication infrastructure with ultra-high reliable and ultra-low latency broadband traffic delivery. Such wireless communication systems are expected to be applicable in many future applications such as automatic industrial control, intelligent transportation, remote surgery, tactile internet and etc. Take automatic industrial control as an example. It uses computers or robots, and information technologies to handle different processes and machineries, with the most stringent round-trip latency requirements down to 1-5 ms and reliability requirements as low as 10^(-9) to 10^(-7). The legacy LTE solutions can only guarantee round trip latency > 20ms with reliability around 10^(-4). 5G new radio (NR) ultra-reliable and Low latency communication (URLLC) technologies will bridge the gap and become a key factor for the wide-spread penetration of wireless in industrial communication systems.
In this project, ASTRI plans to develop new radio (NR) release 15 ultra-reliable and Low latency communication (URLLC) technologies for the evolution of Mission Critical and Reliable Communications technologies, including
‒ URLLC PHY Core Design and Implementation
‒ URLLC PHY Procedure Design and Implementation
‒ URLLC Protocol Stack (PS) design and Implementation
A number of companies have shown strong interests in collaborating with ASTRI and adopting our technologies to be developed from this project. Initially engaged customers include: a private network system integrator (HBFEC), an offshore broadband and government private network provider (NTACT), a small cell public and private network provider (Sunnada), and a NFV software platform & Realtime operation system provider (ENEA). Other vendors, such as Foxconn and other SoC providers (NXP Freescale and Intel) also have approached us for potential technology licensing from this project.