This document captures the findings from the study item "Study on further NR RedCap UE complexity reduction" [2]. The study concerns potential solutions for reducing UE complexity further compared to the RedCap UE type introduced in Rel-17 [3], providing NR support for low-tier devices between existing LPWA UEs and Rel-17 RedCap UEs to further expand the market for RedCap use cases with relatively low cost, low energy consumption, and low data rate requirements, targeting 10 Mbps peak rate. The study focuses on UE bandwidth reduction to 5 MHz and/or UE peak rate reduction to 10 Mbps, possibly in combination with relaxed UE processing timeline. The scope of the study includes support for FR1 bands for FDD and TDD and coexistence with Rel-15/16/17 UEs. The scope of the study does not include LPWA use cases.

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5G aims to accelerate industrial transformation and digitalization, which improve flexibility, enhance productivity and efficiency, reduce maintenance, and improve operational safety. Industrial sensors play an important role for realizing such a vision. Not only widely used in industrial automation and digitalization use cases, industrial sensors are also widely used in the general environmental monitoring use cases such as monitoring of critical infrastructure (e.g., buildings, bridges, water dams, etc.) or monitoring for natural disasters (e.g., wild fire, flood, tsunami, earthquake, etc.). Another emerging new class of new 5G use cases is the smart city vertical, which covers data collection and processing to more efficiently monitor and control city resources, and to provide services to city residents. Especially, the deployment of surveillance cameras is an essential part of the smart city but also of factories and industries. Furthermore, there have been increasing interests in wearables use cases such as smart watches, eHealth related devices, and medical monitoring devices. These use cases call for different design considerations and have different requirements in terms of form factor, UE complexity and energy efficiency, compared to eMBB devices. The support of industrial sensors, video surveillance, and wearables were the motivations behind Rel-17 RedCap. Through the Rel-17 NR RedCap work item, 3GPP has established a framework for enabling reduced capability NR devices suitable for a range of use cases, including the industrial sensors, video surveillance, and wearables use cases, with requirements on low UE complexity and sometimes also on low UE power consumption. Now when the foundation has been laid in Rel-17 [3], enhancements can be considered to improve the support for the mentioned use cases and also to expand RedCap into a new range of use cases such as smart grid. To further expand the market for RedCap use cases with relatively low cost, low energy consumption, and low data rate requirements, e.g., industrial wireless sensor network use cases, some further complexity reduction enhancements should be considered. Rel-18 RedCap should provide NR support for low-tier devices between existing LPWA UEs and the capabilities of Rel-17 RedCap UEs. The supported peak data rate for Rel-18 RedCap targets to 10Mbps. Rel-18 RedCap should not overlap with existing LPWA solutions. The enhancements should be introduced while maintaining the integrity of the RedCap ecosystem and maximizing the benefit of economies of scale. The SI targets enhancements applicable to the RedCap framework defined in Rel-17, including principles of network awareness of device capabilities.

The study includes the following objectives:

• Study further UE complexity reduction techniques based on Rel-17 evaluation methodology in TR 38.875.
  • Consider network impact, coexistence of Rel-17 and Rel-18 RedCap and non-RedCap UEs in a cell, UE impact, specification impact.
  • Potential solutions, which may complement each other, for reducing device complexity are focusing on:
    • UE bandwidth reduction to 5MHz in FR1,
      • Possibly in combination with relaxed UE processing timeline for PDSCH and/or PUSCH and/or CSI
    • Reduced UE peak data rate in FR1,
      • Possibly including restricted bandwidth for PDSCH and/or PUSCH
      • Possibly in combination with relaxed UE processing timeline for PDSCH and/or PUSCH and/or CSI
• Notes:
  • Rel-15 SSB should be reused and L1 changes minimized.
  • Operation in BWP with/without SSB and without/with RF retuning should be considered.
  • It is not precluded that some solutions for FR1 can be applied to FR2 in WI stage.
  • Aim to define a single Rel-18 RedCap UE type for further UE complexity reduction.