3GPP Releases
We have a lot of discussion about 3GPP Releases.
3GPP stands for Third Generation Partnership Project which is the name of a group of standards groups that have a focus on Cellular and the replacement for public voice (known as multimedia systems) networks and services. Wikipedia has a good overview of 3GPP and its history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3GPP
What you might not know is that when we talk about 3GPP Release 13 or 3GPP Release 16 we are talking about lists of features and the way they will be implemented. A Release is simply an agreed list of features that get defined in a number of specific standards documents. In general each release has a focus area as well as other enhancements across the whole cellular technical area.
For public safety 3GPP Release 13 (Published in 2015) had a focus on the first set of features for Mission Critical services starting with Push-to-Talk as well as Mobile to Mobile services known as Isolated-EUTRAN. At the time they referred to the Mission Critical features as “essential functionality for LTE to be used by ‘blue light’ services for private mobile radio voice communication”. These were not the only things published in Release13. In total Release 13 contains around 170 individual features across several hundred individual 3GPP specification documents.
Release 14 has a focus on Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2X) communications as well as more definition on mission critical features such as MC Video and MC Data services. Rel14 also defines the first spectrum bands allocated for HPUE.
Release 15 had a focus on the first phase 5G as well as the definition for LTE to LMR interworking Function (IWF).
3GPP Release 16 had a focus on 5G Phase 2 as well as on Platooning for V2X and improvements for Internet of Things (IoT).
Release 16 contains updates to a number of mission critical features including Data Streaming, media storage, multimedia broadcast and architecture requirements all for MC Data services. As well as improvements to MC protocols Release 16 also describes how Mission Critical services could be extended for use by a wider business market rather than just the public safety and civil defence areas they were defined for. Taxi dispatch and railway traffic management was a specific focus. The intent of these enhancements to the original MC specifications is to bring greater reliability and reduced costs through wider deployment and an increase in economies of scale for these features and services.
Release 17 development is under way and items are being collected for consideration for Release 18.
Items under study, development or improvement in Release 17 relating to Mission Critical services include;
Study on location enhancements for mission critical services
Broadcast / Multicast requirements supporting Mission Critical Services in 5G
Study on Mission Critical services support over 5G System
Mission Critical Data
Protocol enhancements for Mission Critical Services
Mission Critical system migration and interconnection
MC services support on Isolated Operations (IOPS) mode of operation
Enhanced Mission Critical Push-to-talk architecture phase 3
These 8 items are part of the ~200 work items being actively negotiated and developed for Release 17.
There are thousands of people actively working on 3GPP work items around the globe. Having been involved in this and other standards bodies, one of which I was the chair of a technical working group responsible for developing data roaming standards, the process is intensive and involves considerable negotiation between the different telcos, vendors and government bodies.
Useful links
List of all features for each 3GPP Release
https://www.3gpp.org/DynaReport/FeatureListFrameSet.htm
Overview of Release 13 (2015)
https://www.3gpp.org/release-13
Overview of Release 15
https://www.3gpp.org/release-15
Overview of Release 16 (2020)