3GPP Road Map

August 2023
 Introduction

A joining of multiple telecommunications standards organisations, 3GPP creates global specifications and standards for the five existing
generations of mobile wireless technologies. The organisation continuously works on parallel releases, with common timelines for opening and
“freezing” them, meeting four times a year to outline and develop new releases, as the timeline in Figure 1 illustrates.

Figure 1. Timeline of 3GPP standards releases

Release 16 Release 18 Release 20

2022 2025
2019

2020 2023 2026

Release 15 Release 17 Release 19 Release 21

5G 5G Advanced 6G

In this report, GSA outlines each release from 15, which introduced 5G to the world of wireless technologies, to our current position of Release
18 and the first studies for Release 19 features and enhancements.

For more on the 3GPP organization and the importance of standards, please refer to GSA Executive Members Ericsson, Nokia and Qualcomm.

© Copyright 2023 Global mobile Suppliers Association 3GPP Road Map | August 2023 | 2
 Release 15

The 5G System

Enhanced Mobile Broadband

In Release 15, new specifications for data rates are specified, data
rates that are much higher and further enhanced than those
for LTE, in various settings such as indoor, outdoor, urban, rural,
office or home uses. Several key performance indicators are also
outlined for these new data rate specifications: for example, for the
downlink, data rates of up to 50 Mbps are expected in outdoor uses
and up to 1 Gbps indoors.

Critical Communications and Ultrareliable

and Low-Latency Communications
Several new applications such as industrial automation need
ultralow latency and very high availability of communication
the narrowband physical downlink control channel, and allows
services. However, these factors can be affected by variables such
the device to skip the paging process for more optimal power
as delay on the radio interface, transmission in the 5G system and
consumption, by switching off hardware for longer periods.
transmission to a server outside the 5G system, among others.

Therefore, Release 15 outlined key performance indicators to Scheduling Request (FDD)

ensure low rates of latency and high availability. For example,
Another factor to lower power consumption is the addition of
a reliability rate of 99.9% is expected in process automation,
features to scheduling requests. For connected user equipment,
alongside data rates of 100 Mbps and end-to-end latency of 50
the eNB can configure periodic narrowband physical uplink shared
milliseconds, ensuring a high level of usability and user experience.
channel resources through the radio resource control, allowing the
device to send a buffer status report so that the node is informed
Machine-Type Communications and when pending traffic has arrived in the device’s buffer.
Internet of Things
This causes resources to be activated and deactivated by dynamic

This section is split into 15 additions and enhancements of signalling on the narrowband physical downlink control channel,

functionalities for narrowband Internet of things (NB-IoT) uses, creating more efficient power output.

with a primary focus on reducing power consumption of user

Early Data Transmission (FDD)
equipment.
This capability was introduced to reduce the amount of power used
Wake-Up Signalling for Idle Mode (FDD) in transmitting “padding bits” if the user equipment’s pending data

When user equipment is in discontinuous reception and extended is smaller than the maximum permitted by the eNB.

discontinuous reception power-saving modes, it relies on a regular By using a preconfigured set of narrowband physical random
check for a paging message from the core network. However, access channel (NPRACH) resources for its preamble transmission,
frequently no message arrives, meaning the power consumed by the eNB can allow the device to transmit a smaller amount of data
this process could be saved. than the maximum size.

With wake-up signalling for idle mode, the evolved Node B (eNB)
sends a wake-up signal to a device instructing it to monitor

© Copyright 2023 Global mobile Suppliers Association 3GPP Road Map | August 2023 | 3
Quick Release of Radio Resource Control unambiguous determination of user equipment range. Beyond that

Connection (FDD and TDD) distance, ambiguities became apparent for the eNB to identify the
equipment’s range. With Release 15, a new format of NPRACH was
Before this feature, NB-IoT equipment was required to wait up to
introduced, allowing for range determination of up to 120 km.
10 seconds after receiving a connection release message from the
radio resource control. With the new quick release feature, if the Small Cell Support (FDD and TDD)
device is not polled, it can consider the receipt of the message to be
The eNB is allowed deployment as microcells, picocells and
successfully acknowledged as soon as it has sent hybrid automatic
femtocells, all of which use lower transmit power than macro eNB.
repeat request acknowledgement, or HARQ-ACK, a process used
in wireless communication systems to improve the reliability and
Reduced System Acquisition Time (FDD)
throughput of data transmission.
Release 15 allows for the evolved Node B to transmit
Relaxed Monitoring for Cell additional subframes containing repetitions of
Reselection (FDD and TDD) system information blocks known as SIB1-
NB on anchor and non-anchor carriers.
This allows much of the radio resource
This enables faster decoding of SIB1-
measurement to be avoided when an
NB and therefore reduces the power
NB-IoT device is stationary, helping to
consumption during cell access.
prolong its battery life. The network
configures the device with an “NR signal
User Equipment
received power delta” threshold. As long
Differentiation (FDD and
as the change in signal received power
TDD)
is less than the threshold for the device’s
current cell, the equipment does not need This allows the network to store
to monitor neighbouring cells for 24 hours. information of the mobility management
entity about the equipment and its traffic
Unacknowledged Mode in Radio profile. This is used to improve the scheduling of
Link Control (FDD and TDD) the device according to its battery life, mobility and when
it has traffic to transmit, further improving its power efficiency.
Release 15 adds support for unacknowledged mode in radio link
control to complement acknowledged and transparent modes,
Access Barring (FDD and TDD)
both of which were introduced in Release 13. This reduces the need
to send radio link control over the air for IoT traffic. This feature allows user equipment to be barred based on the
coverage level. Devices in deeper coverage levels and needing
Narrowband Measurement Accuracy (FDD) more repetitions of their transmissions can be barred separately
from less resource-intensive equipment.
As alternatives to narrowband reference signals, the narrowband
secondary synchronisation signal and the narrowband physical
Power Headroom Reporting (FDD)
broadcast channel can be used for measuring NR signal received
power. Both use more resource elements for transmission than First introduced in Release 13, power headroom reports are made
narrowband reference signals and therefore reduce the subframes by the user equipment from one of two tables depending on
used by devices to achieve a given measurement accuracy. coverage, each containing four entries. This enhancement improves
its granularity in Msg3 to have 16 levels.
NPRACH Range (FDD)
The previous NPRACH supported cell radius up to 40 km, with an

© Copyright 2023 Global mobile Suppliers Association 3GPP Road Map | August 2023 | 4
Vehicle-to-Everything Communications
Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications were first broached
in Release 14, which laid out how the 3GPP system would begin to
support V2X services through LTE, alongside focusing on providing
a data transport service for basic road safety through cooperative
awareness messages, decentralised environmental notification
messages and basic safety message.
Release 15 further specifies the service requirements to enhance
3GPP support for V2X applications. These requirements are
outlined in this section.
Vehicle Platooning
This enables vehicles to dynamically form a group. All the vehicles
in a platoon receive periodic data from the leading vehicle, to carry
on platoon operations. Platooning allows the gap between cars
to reduce to a very small distance, and may therefore allow the
vehicles following the lead to become autonomous.
Advanced Driving
This allows fully automated or semi-automated driving. Each vehicle
shares data obtained from its local sensors with others in proximity,
© Copyright 2023 Global mobile Suppliers Association
meaning that all vehicles can share their trajectories and distance,
increasing safety and collision avoidance, improving efficiency and
reducing traffic.
Extended Sensors
These enable the exchange of raw or processed data gathered
through local sensors or live video in vehicles, roadside units,
pedestrian devices and V2X application servers. This allows vehicles
to improve their understanding of the environment, beyond what
their own sensors can detect.
Remote Driving
Enables a remote driver or a V2X application to operate a remote
vehicle for passengers who cannot drive, or a remote vehicle in
a dangerous environment. Driving can be enhanced by cloud
computing where routes are predictable and with low variation for
public transportation, for example.
3GPP Road Map | August 2023 | 5
 Release 16
Release 16 introduced a set of independent improvements for
the 5G system created in the prior specifications. This release
also brought enhancements to the 5G and 4G radio interfaces to
improve cooperation between them. The system-wide features
are designed to make the 5G system a communication-enabling
platform suitable for a variety of industry sectors.
Wireless networking with LTE or 5G enables the digital
transformation of operations even in the most dynamic, remote or
highly secure environments, while offering the scale benefits of a
technology that has already been deployed worldwide.
GSA has identified 1,148 customers in a variety of industries
deploying LTE- or 5G-based private mobile networks in 74 countries
worldwide at the end of March 2023 (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. Private mobile network customer references of over
€100,000
1,079
761
445
224
109
27 55
2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022
Although the proportion of 5G deployments makes up a large
number of references of private mobile networks, this number
skews towards long-term trials and deployments within educational
and test-bed or validation facilities, with a limited number running
real operation in industrial situations.
© Copyright 2023 Global mobile Suppliers Association
Release 16 extends 5G NR support to wireless backhaul, and as
a result makes it possible for 5G to be used for a wireless link
between a central location and distributed cell sites, simplifying
the deployment of small cells and becoming instantly useful for
emergency situations or events such as festivals. Integrated access
and backhaul can use any frequency band in which 5G NR can
operate, making 5G increasingly versatile and useful.
New Radio in Unlicensed Spectrum
Release 16 allows the operation of 5G NR in unlicensed spectrum,
specifically aimed at the 5 GHz and 6 GHz bands, increasing data
rates and capacity for 3GPP systems. It supports standalone
operation where no licensed spectrum is necessary, as well as
license-assisted operation, greatly improving deployment flexibility
compared with LTE.
1,148
V2X Communications
Release 16 adds the option of NR sidelink for in-coverage, no-
coverage and partial-coverage environments. It supports unicast,
groupcast, broadcast communication and hybrid automatic repeat
request, which can be used for more robust situations. Alongside
this, Release 16 also adds the ability to configure or create groups.
Improved Positioning
Release 16 introduces position referencing signal, which has a much
larger bandwidth than LTE and more regular structure, allowing for
1Q23 a more precise correlation and time of arrival estimation.
3GPP Road Map | August 2023 | 6
 Release 17

Release 17 continued to build on the foundations for the 5G system Device Power Savings
laid out in previous releases, bringing further enhancements to
Release 17 brought power-saving advances for idle and connected
capacity, coverage, latency, power and mobility. Alongside this, new
operation modes, supporting new techniques to reduce
features were introduced, including 5G NR support for satellite
unnecessary device paging receptions and relaxation of device
communications and boundless extended reality.
measurement, among others.

Integrated Access and Backhaul, Simple

Repeaters
By enhancing integrated access and backhaul and introducing a
simple repeater — a cost-efficient infrastructure option to expand
FDD and TDD networks — more-efficient 5G deployments can be
achieved.

Dynamic Spectrum Sharing

The introduction of cross-carrier scheduling allows for data
channels to be scheduled on the shared primary cell, using the
physical downlink control channel of a secondary cell. This makes
it easier for operators to overcome shortages of physical downlink
shared channel resources in the 5G NR cell, which can occur as the
number of user equipment increases.

Positioning
5G NR positioning is further improved in Release 17, specifically for
Feature Enhancements factory automation, automotive and remote-control applications,
reducing latency to enable reliable positioning. To meet other

Massive MIMO demands such as integrity protection of the location information,

Release 17 introduces key performance indicators for reliability and
Several enhancements were made to major areas of technology,
integrity measurement.
including transmission and reception points such as achieving
beam-diversity for physical downlink control channel transmission.
Improvements to sounding reference signals and channel state
New Features
information were also added.
Reduced Capability
Coverage
To support less complex IoT devices such as video cameras and
Aspects such as uplink control and data channel design received wearables, Release 17 introduced a scaled-down wideband 5G NR
upgrades, including increased repetitions for greater reliability design and reduced the receiver antennas needed at the device for
and joint channel estimation across multiple transmissions and regular 5G NR from four to just one or two with Reduced Capability,
frequency hopping. These all target an improvement for diverse also known as RedCap or NR-Light. This enables further energy
deployments in sub-7 GHz, millimetre-wave and non-terrestrial savings and more effective coexistence with other 5G NR devices.
networks.

© Copyright 2023 Global mobile Suppliers Association 3GPP Road Map | August 2023 | 7
Non-Terrestrial Networks
The main new feature introduced in Release 17 is 5G NR support for satellite communications. It includes two projects, one focusing on satellite
backhaul communications for consumer-premises equipment and direct-to-mobile-phone data rates, and the second project being the
adaptation of enhanced machine-type communications and NB-IoT operations to satellite communications.

By the end of March 2023, GSA had identified 49 publicly announced partnerships between operators and satellite vendors across 34 countries
and territories. In total, 35 operators in 29 countries and territories have planned satellite services, with seven operators in seven countries and
territories currently evaluating, testing or trialling these (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Countries with community and enterprise broadband satellite partnerships, by status, as of April 2023

Launched Evaluating/testing/trialling Planned

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© Australian Bureau of Sta�s�cs, GeoNames, Microso�, Navinfo, OpenStreetMap, TomTom

Spectrum Expansion
Support for millimetre-wave spectrum in the 24.25 to 52.6 GHz
range was expanded to 71 GHz, intended to open new uses and
deployments.
Sidelink Expansion
Building on the C-V2X PC5 interface design introduced in Release
16, Release 17 brought several improved sidelink capabilities,
such as optimised resource allocation, power savings and new
frequency-band support, including expanding the applications
supported by sidelink, such as IoT and public safety.
Enhanced Precise Positioning
To better meet more stringent requirements, Release 17 improved
5G positioning, with a reduction in positioning latency, greater
positional efficiency for increased capacity and better assisted
GNSS positioning performance.
Broadcast and Multicast Expansion
Introduced standalone broadcast enhancements through the use
of 6, 7 and 8 MHz carrier bandwidths and mixed-mode multicast
support for 5G NR with simultaneous and dynamic switching
between broadcast and unicast transmissions.
Boundless Extended Reality
Acknowledging the need to better support the burgeoning virtual,
augmented and extended reality industry, Release 17 focused on
characterising various types of extended reality traffic. It defined
requirements and evaluation methodology for the identified traffic
types, providing performance evaluations to be used for identifying
areas of improvement in Release 18.

© Copyright 2023 Global mobile Suppliers Association 3GPP Road Map | August 2023 | 8
 Release 18
Since introducing 5G in Release 15, 3GPP has sought to improve
the performance, reliability and efficiency of the fifth generation of
mobile technologies. As the first release to introduce 5G-Advanced,
Release 18 will significantly boost performance and address several
new uses. It will embrace artificial intelligence and machine learning
to provide data-driven, intelligent network solutions.
Enhancing 5G Performance
Increasing Energy Efficiency
As energy costs have risen alongside mounting pressure to meet
sustainability targets, so has the desire to make networks more
energy efficient. Therefore, Release 18 will undertake a study on
network energy savings for NR. The study will aim to define both
a network energy consumption model for a base station and
evaluation methodology, as well as identifying key performance
indicators. It will also investigate techniques to improve network
energy savings in deployment settings.
Improving Physical Random Access Channel
Release 18 aims to enhance the coverage of physical random access
channels, much like the upgrades to physical uplink control channel
in Release 17. In tandem, it will study techniques to raise the limit
for AC and DC power of user equipment and reduce maximum
power reduction or peak-to-average power ratio. Other techniques
will also be examined, such as dynamic switching between cyclic-
prefix orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (CP-OFDM) and
discrete Fourier transform spread OFDM in the uplink.
MIMO Evolution
It has been observed in commercial deployments that devices with
medium or high mobility experience significant performance loss
in multi-user multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) applications,
partially down to outdated channel state information. This is set to
be explored in the upcoming release to improve performance for
such devices. A transmission configuration indicator framework for
single transmission-reception points was introduced in Release 17,
and this will be extended to multiple-transmission-and-reception-
point applications.
Release 18 will also study coherent joint transmission, timing
© Copyright 2023 Global mobile Suppliers Association
advances and enhanced uplink power control for multiple
transmission and reception points, in order to better support
advanced equipment such as consumer-premises equipment and
fixed wireless access devices.
Extension of Multicast Support
Developed for Release 17, multicast support will be expanded in
Release 18 to support user equipment in radio resource control
inactive state. It will introduce features that enable devices
in connected state to receive broadcast and unicast service
simultaneously, and study mechanisms to improve resource
efficiency in settings where the radio access network will be shared.
Improved Positioning Efficiency
Release 18 will investigate solutions to improve the accuracy,
integrity and power efficiency of positioning services, study sidelink
positioning and investigate potential positioning support for
RedCap-based devices.
Flexible Spectrum Use
Reducing Minimum Channel Bandwidth
As laid out in previous 3GPP releases, the minimum channel
bandwidth supported by the current 5G NR specifications is 5 MHz.
However, there is demand for deploying NR in dedicated spectrum
of less than 5 MHz, so Release 18 will bring changes to facilitate this.
Reducing Inter-Cell Interference
Dynamic spectrum sharing is a crucial 5G feature that enables a
base station to use shared spectrum to provide connectivity to LTE
as well as 5G NR devices, facilitating the migration from LTE to 5G
NR. However, in dynamic spectrum sharing, the physical downlink
control channel capacity is a bottleneck.
To increase its capacity, in Release 18, 3GPP will study the possibility
of allowing the NR physical downlink control channel to be
transmitted in symbols overlapping with LTE cell-specific reference
signal (CSR). And to further mitigate inter-cell interference, the
feature for configuring user equipment with multiple LTE CSR rate-
matching patterns in multiple transmission and reception points
will be available to single-transmission-and-reception-point uses.
3GPP Road Map | August 2023 | 9
 Release 19

Release 19 will aim to expand the support offered by 3GPP-defined

standards to emerging industries, with multiple work studies
showing the growing importance of the metaverse and IoT. Work
studies included in 3GPP Release 19 are explored below.

Integrated Sensing and Communication

A study focused on improving the power efficiency of sensors. Many

devices use sensors to understand their environment, so wireless
communication between the transmitter and receiver produces
large volumes of data. This helps applications to adapt their
behaviour depending on their environment but increases the need
for energy to store and transmit the data.

This study into sensing functionalities being cost-effectively

provided by 3GPP communications systems will lead to more which will require further study of privacy, data protection and

power-efficient operation of devices. energy efficiency. 5G systems will also need to be able to efficiently
handle movement in and out of coverage areas, model- and avatar-
Ambient Power in IoT generation latency, power constraints and computing capabilities.

Another study aimed at reducing the power consumption of IoT

devices, through energy harvesting. It will assess whether reducing
the amount of time between a device transmitting and receiving
data may help the device to use less power, as many IoT devices are
Upper Layer Traffic Steering, Switching and
Split
Non-3GPP access technologies can be used to widen the coverage

limited by their short battery life.
Localised Mobile Metaverse Services
This study includes several aspects aimed at improving the local
representation of an avatar and interaction with it, namely:
• Key performance indicators, such as for latency and throughput
of a wireless device when moving from outdoors to indoors, for
example, whereby 3GPP-defined radio signals cannot penetrate.
Wi-Fi will allow users a continuous connection without adverse
effects on their connection experience. In Release 19, the ability to
switch between multiple 3GPP access technologies will be studied,
such as steering certain traffic to use a specific access technology,
boosting efficiency and connectivity experience for users.

• Efficiency aspects for many users in a single location

• User identification and representation of entities
• Acquisition and use of local information to enable metaverse
services
Enhancements to Satellite Access
Release 19 will investigate the potential introduction of “store
and forward” services for non-terrestrial networks. Traditionally,
signalling and data-traffic exchange between a device with satellite

• Exposing local information to third parties to enable metaverse access and the remote ground network requires the feeder and

services service links to be active simultaneously, to ensure a continuous

Artificial Intelligence Model Transfer
To widen support for artificial intelligence applications and services,
Release 19 will undertake studies of new uses, such as sharing
models directly between devices rather than over 5G networks,
end-to-end connectivity path.
In contrast, under a store-and-forward service, the exchange of
data and signalling traffic will be achieved under a two-step process
that is not simultaneous.

© Copyright 2023 Global mobile Suppliers Association 3GPP Road Map | August 2023 | 10
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