Re: [6gip] 6G in 3GPP?

[Alexandre Petrescu <[e-mail]>]

Le 14/01/2021 à 19:28, Flinck, Hannu (Nokia - FI/Espoo) a écrit :
> Hello Bechet
> 
> In your mail sent  19^th of Now you are attaching presentations.
> 
> In Alex’ presentation, there is slide titled 6G-related efforts. In 
> that slide the last bullet item reads “• 3GPP Release 17 talks also 
> 6G”.

Sorry, I cant remember precisely why I said that, and I might have been
wrong.  Certainly I did not read a 3GPP Rel 17 document searching for
the 6G term in it.

I am trying to dig my email archives at that time on this email list.

I could find an email saying that 6G is not really at 3GPP but rather
'5GS' (a term which I dont udnerstand) and which was said to be Rel. 18
(not 17), and it said to be 'potentially'.  The document is
http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/tsg_sa/TSG_SA/TSGS_86/Docs/SP-191040.zip

I could find an email pointing to a Oulu Uni's 6G paper
http://jultika.oulu.fi/files/isbn9789526226842.pdf
That paper says "Meanwhile, along with 5G being deployed around the
world, 3GPP Release 17 and Release 18 would deal with
beyond-5G features."  It is the "beyond-5G" term which would have made
me think that "beyond-5G" to be 6G, and hence the bullet "3GPP Release
17 talks also 6G."  And it is a "would" and not an "is"; the extension
from "would" to "is" is entirely my error.

The reason I might have mistaken "beyond-5G" for "6G" is that I worked
on a "Beyond 3G" once that never materialized.  Then I surveilled 4G and
I _think_ I didnt see a "Beyond 4G" or I might have missed it.  I
suspected that people stopped working on "Beyond 4G" and worked on 4G+
and on 5G.  Then I might have assumed that the same would happen with
5G: there would be no "Beyond 5G" and whatever people call "Beyond 5G"
today to be "5G+" or "6G".

But I guess all this is not interesting and that it falls under the
umbrella of speculations.

I could rather list the terms I heard about what's happening after 5G:
5G+, 5G-and-beyond, beyond-5G, and a few others I cant remember but
surely there were more.  For me, they are too many and, coupled with the
deceiving term 'LTE' (what is 'long term'?) I think it's better to talk
simply about 6G and year 2030.

The fact that 3GPP might not want to talk about '6G' is a 3GPP aspect.
It is an aspect, not necessarily an issue or a problem, at this time.

Where 3GPP has one particular problem is in that '3G' term sticking
around after so many years.  3GPP has generated other problems in
terminology.  For example LTE-V2X, vs LTE_V2X.  It is a rather loosely
defined term and very misunderstood by many.  Another potential problem
is this: putting a CAM message on UDP on IP on a 5G wireless link
qualifies as "5G-V2X"?  Depends, and hence there are misunderstandings.
  There are many other similar problems with 3GPP terms.  Should we fix
them here?  If so, it wouldnt have any authority.

Maybe we want to discuss 3GPP terminology elsewhere, not at IETF(?)

What might influence our discussion here on this email list is _if_ 3GPP
comes up with a new term, let's say something like "SixthJee" instead of
6G, and if that term gets tract.  It's something it might have been
tried with LTE.  I think the 'LTE' term was supposed to stay the same
forever.  At that point, if 3GPP comes up with some new term for 6G that
gets used a lot, then we'd have to modify our terms here too.

> I can assure you that Rel 17 is not addressing 6G for sure. There
> are no SA1 study items on 6G.

It is good to know.

> Please have look at the link that Stefan Alfredsson shared. It is 
> point to a mid-generation step to 5G. What is mid-generation in your 
> opinion?

Mid-generation to 5G would be 4.5G?

Mid-generation to 6G would be 5.5G?

> Isn’t it midway?

Midway is an island in the Pacific? :-)

I will reply to Stefan Alfredsson separately.

Another question would be also what do the smartphones display next to
the 5 increasing bars indicating signal quality?  As I know them, they
are like this:
(nothing), 2G, GPRS, 3G, H, H+, 4G,  4G+, 5G.
(I never sa 5G myself, but I guess it would be so)

I did not see 2.5G, 3.5G or 4.5G even if some people do talk about it.

Also, I think the H, H+ and GPRS display texts near the 5 signal quality
bars are errors from the past that would not be replicated in the future.

Alex

> 
> Best regards
> 
> Hannu
> 
> *From:*Behcet Sarikaya <[e-mail]> *Sent:* Thursday, 
> January 14, 2021 6:31 PM *To:* Flinck, Hannu (Nokia - FI/Espoo) 
> <[e-mail]> *Cc:* [e-mail] *Subject:*
> Re: [6gip] 6G in 3GPP?
> 
> Hi Hannu,
> 
> On Wed, Jan 13, 2021 at 9:58 AM Flinck, Hannu (Nokia - FI/Espoo) 
> <[e-mail] 
> <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
> 
> Hello
> 
> Neither I know any, nor my colleagues any 3GPP documents about 6G.
> 
> I checked our chair slides at  IETF 109 side meeting, we have no 
> mention of 3GPP doing 6G there.
> 
> 3GPP is currently at mid-way with 5G. There will still be a number
> of releases left for 5G  to come.
> 
> This is wrong.
> 
> 5G is already here. Samsung had 5G phone in 2019. Apple iPhone 12
> was introduced in 2020 with 5G.
> 
> There are deployments going on worldwide.
> 
> It seems you are confusing 3GPP Releases with 5G deployments. 5G
> came with the first release that introduced 5G, I think it was
> Release 15.
> 
> So any operator compliant with that release claims to support 5G in 
> its network. In the US almost all major operators claim to have 5G.
> 
> Newer releases of course are developed as Release 16, 17, etc. They 
> introduce many nice features. No issues with that.
> 
> However, as far as I know the operators usually do not update their 
> networks with any new release that comes up.
> 
> With LTE, as far as I remember the most popular release was Release 
> 12, (I think)  which was the most widely deployed.
> 
> In fact, I assume that now when 5G is pushing towards new verticals 
> (mIoT, industry, vehicular, etc.) there will be new requirements for
>  protocol work needed for 5G. For example, consider the discussion 
> about multi-path support for QUIC in QUIC wg. Similar requests are 
> likely to come.
> 
> Therefore, I am on the opinion that 6G work, even 6G related
> protocol research work in the IRTF, should wait for use cases (and
> radio extensions) that 5G is not able to respond.
> 
> We do not have any IRTF request currently, so I can not talk about 
> that, IRTF is another issue.
> 
> For our list, we don't have a charter to follow. We are a mailing 
> list,we submitted a short description text to IESG which was 
> approved.
> 
> So we can discuss freely all issues around 6G  mostly as they are 
> related to IP, hence the name 6gip.
> 
> We plan on continuing to host side meetings, continue to discuss the 
> developments on 6G, as we see projects are popping up all over the 
> world. The conferences are having 6G sessions, special or invited 
> talks on 6G, etc.
> 
> So the question of what is 6G is going to get clarified more and
> more as we go along. If our discussions, the work people do in this
> list contributes to that, even better.
> 
> I believe that one day 3GPP SA1 will start working on developing 
> requirements for 6G. We don't know when, maybe as someone active in 
> 3GPP, you can tell us.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Behcet
> 
> 
> Best regards Hannu
> 
> -----Original Message----- From: Alexandre Petrescu 
> <[e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>>
>  Sent: Wednesday, January 13, 2021 10:40 AM To: Flinck, Hannu (Nokia
> - FI/Espoo) <[e-mail] 
> <mailto:[e-mail]>>; [e-mail] 
> <mailto:[e-mail]> Subject: Re: 6G in 3GPP?
> 
> Me too I would like to ask I would like whether someone knows of a 
> document on the 3gpp.org <http://3gpp.org> site that has the term 
> '6G' in it?
> 
> Le 12/01/2021 à 17:55, Flinck, Hannu (Nokia - FI/Espoo) a écrit :
>> Hello Alexandre
>> 
>> In your slides you claim the 6G is discussed in Rel 17. Can you 
>> tell in which document or WG?
>> 
>> I am involved quite a bit in 3GPP as well as in 6G research and I 
>> am not aware of any of such discussion.
>> 
>> Without a reference I must consider that statement be 
>> misinformation.
>> 
>> Best regards
>> 
>> Hannu
> 
> Thanks for having gone through the slides; the slides tried to 
> summarize the discussions on the email list at that time.
> 
> It might be that a potential reationship between 3GPP and 6G to be a
>  stretch.
> 
> I might bear responsibility of having misread the emails, or read 
> them too quickly, when drawing a conclusion that 3GPP might work on 
> 6G, and writing that down.  Sorry for misunderstanding.
> 
> We had some mention on this list of an NGMN alliance (Next
> Generation Mobile Networks) which initiated a task force on 6G;
> elsewhere, NGMN is ack'ed as a contributor to 3GPP by a wikipedia
> article.  That might make it that 3GPP might have some work on 6G.
> 
> It might be that some discussions between usual contributors to 3GPP
>  might have mentioned 6G even though there might be no document on 
> 3gpp.org <http://3gpp.org> that reads '6G'.  For my part, I do not 
> know what document is Rel 17 more precisely, but I suspect I could 
> find Rel 17 on 3gpp.org <http://3gpp.org>.
> 
> It might be that other industry alliances (e.g. 5GAA) could be 
> outright opposed to work on things deemed "6G".  It might be that 
> such opposition is supported by other funding bodies.  I do not know
>  why the opposition, but that is the way it is.
> 
> If, for some reason, 3GPP considers the talk of 6G to be too early, 
> and why not potentially disruptive to the ongoing work of 5G, then 
> that is a 3GPP problem to solve.  That would not be the only problem
>  they should address.  I suspect a ling standing problem is even the
>  name "3G" in a 3GPP working on something else than 3G (e.g. 3GPP 
> working on 4G or 5G).
> 
> I want to tell also that there might be other problems of 5G, on 
> which 3GPP works, and which deserve attention.
> 
> Such problems could be solved by working on something new, like 6G.
> 
> It is a speculation from my part.
> 
> I would like to ask others whether someone knows of a document on
> the 3gpp.org <http://3gpp.org> site that has the term '6G' in it?
> 
> Alex
> 
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