5G/NR - Waveform

Waveform

A few years ago from now (Jul 2017) when the discussion about 5G was at early phase, th
'what kind of waveform will be used in 5G' and a lot of new idea (new waveform) were pro
look into some snapshot on this technical history, take a look at 5G Waveform Candate pa
discussion, you might have seen many people/many techical documents talking about 'wh
current OFDM based waveform' and 'why we need to redesign the waveform in 5G'. Howe
discussion I start sensing that the good old buddy (OFDM) would get more attention and fi
specification rolls out, it is decided to go with the old and familiar waveform OFDM. It migh
disappoiting to those who have been expecting a completely new technology (disruptive t
who is working in the area of baseband DSP or FPGA in legacy LTE, this conclusion would s

If you are already familiar with the OFDM technolgy and LTE waveform, there would be on
portions that you need to study. If you are new to this technolgy, it would be a good timing
studying a new things (I would recommend you to start from this page : OFDM Introductio

 Overall Procedure for Waveform Generation

 CP OFDM Sequence Generation

 Transform Precoding

o Get the Test Procedure and Log / Amarisoft TechAcademy

Overall Procedure for Waveform Generation

Following illustration (based on 38.300 - 5.1) shows overall flow of waveform generation fo
The biggest difference between NR and LTE is that NR can use CP-OFDM for Uplink as well
OFDM depending on use case.
Whether you use CP-OFDM or DFT-s-OFDM can be configurable except msg3 by sepcifying
shown below

38.331 15.3 (2018-10)

RACH-ConfigCommon ::= SEQUENCE {

rach-ConfigGeneric RACH-ConfigGeneric,

totalNumberOfRA-Preambles INTEGER (1..63) OPTIONAL, -- Need S

ssb-perRACH-OccasionAndCB-PreamblesPerSSB CHOICE {

oneEighth ENUMERATED {n4,n8,n12,n16,n20,n24,n28,n32,n36,n40,n44,n48,n52,n

oneFourth ENUMERATED {n4,n8,n12,n16,n20,n24,n28,n32,n36,n40,n44,n48,n52,n

oneHalf ENUMERATED {n4,n8,n12,n16,n20,n24,n28,n32,n36,n40,n44,n48,n52,n5

one ENUMERATED {n4,n8,n12,n16,n20,n24,n28,n32,n36,n40,n44,n48,n52,n56,

two ENUMERATED {n4,n8,n12,n16,n20,n24,n28,n32},

four INTEGER (1..16),

 eight INTEGER (1..8),

sixteen INTEGER (1..4)

} OPTIONAL, - Need M

groupBconfigured SEQUENCE {

ra-Msg3SizeGroupA ENUMERATED {b56, b144, b208, b256, b282, b480,

b640, b800, b1000, spare7, spare6, spare5,

spare4, spare3, spare2, spare1},

messagePowerOffsetGroupB ENUMERATED { minusinfinity, dB0, dB5, dB8, dB1

dB12, dB15, dB18},

numberOfRA-PreamblesGroupA INTEGER (1..64)

} OPTIONAL, -- Need R

ra-ContentionResolutionTimer ENUMERATED { sf8, sf16, sf24, sf32, sf40, sf48,

sf56, sf64},

rsrp-ThresholdSSB RSRP-Range OPTIONAL, -- Need R

rsrp-ThresholdSSB-SUL RSRP-Range OPTIONAL, -- Need R

prach-RootSequenceIndex CHOICE {

l839 INTEGER (0..837),

l139 INTEGER (0..137)

},

msg1-SubcarrierSpacing SubcarrierSpacing,

msg3-transformPrecoding ENUMERATED {enabled} OPTIONAL, -- Need R

...

PUSCH-Config ::= SEQUENCE {

dataScramblingIdentityPUSCH INTEGER (0..1023) OPTIONAL,

txConfig ENUMERATED {codebook, nonCodebook}

dmrs-UplinkForPUSCH-MappingTypeA SetupRelease { DMRS-UplinkConfig }

dmrs-UplinkForPUSCH-MappingTypeB SetupRelease { DMRS-UplinkConfig }

pusch-PowerControl PUSCH-PowerControl

frequencyHopping ENUMERATED {intraSlot, interSlot}

frequencyHoppingOffsetLists SEQUENCE (SIZE (1..4)) OF

INTEGER (1.. maxNrofPhysicalResourceBlocks-1)

resourceAllocation ENUMERATED { resourceAllocationType0,

resourceAllocationType1,

dynamicSwitch},

pusch-TimeDomainAllocationList SetupRelease {

PUSCH-TimeDomainResourceAllocationList

pusch-AggregationFactor ENUMERATED { n2, n4, n8 }

mcs-Table ENUMERATED {qam256, qam64LowSE}

mcs-TableTransformPrecoder ENUMERATED {qam256, qam64LowSE}

transformPrecoder ENUMERATED {enabled, disabled}

codebookSubset ENUMERATED {fullyAndPartialAndNonCoherent,

partialAndNonCoherent,

nonCoherent}

maxRank INTEGER (1..4)

rbg-Size ENUMERATED { config2}

uci-OnPUSCH SetupRelease { UCI-OnPUSCH }

tp-pi2BPSK ENUMERATED {enabled}

...
}

ConfiguredGrantConfig ::= SEQUENCE {

frequencyHopping ENUMERATED {intraSlot, interSlot} ,

cg-DMRS-Configuration DMRS-UplinkConfig,

mcs-Table ENUMERATED {qam256, qam64LowSE}

mcs-TableTransformPrecoder ENUMERATED {qam256, qam64LowSE}

uci-OnPUSCH SetupRelease { CG-UCI-OnPUSCH } OPTIONAL,

resourceAllocation ENUMERATED { resourceAllocationType0,

resourceAllocationType1,

dynamicSwitch },

rbg-Size ENUMERATED {config2},

powerControlLoopToUse ENUMERATED {n0, n1},

p0-PUSCH-Alpha P0-PUSCH-AlphaSetId,

transformPrecoder ENUMERATED {enabled, disabled},

nrofHARQ-Processes INTEGER(1..16),

repK ENUMERATED {n1, n2, n4, n8},

repK-RV ENUMERATED {s1-0231, s2-0303, s3-0000},

periodicity ENUMERATED {

sym2, sym7, sym1x14, sym2x14, sym4x14,

sym5x14, sym8x14, sym10x14, sym16x14,

sym20x14,sym32x14, sym40x14, sym64x14,

sym80x14, sym128x14, sym160x14, sym256x14,

sym320x14, sym512x14,sym640x14, sym1024x14,

sym1280x14, sym2560x14, sym5120x14,sym6,

sym1x12, sym2x12, sym4x12, sym5x12,

 sym8x12, sym10x12, sym16x12, sym20x12,

sym32x12,sym40x12, sym64x12, sym80x12,

sym128x12, sym160x12, sym256x12, sym320x12,

sym512x12, sym640x12,sym1280x12, sym2560x12

},

configuredGrantTimer INTEGER (1..64) OPTIONAL, -- Need R

rrc-ConfiguredUplinkGrant SEQUENCE {

timeDomainOffset INTEGER (0..5119),

timeDomainAllocation INTEGER (0..15),

frequencyDomainAllocation BIT STRING (SIZE(18)),

antennaPort INTEGER (0..31),

dmrs-SeqInitialization INTEGER (0..1),

precodingAndNumberOfLayers INTEGER (0..63),

srs-ResourceIndicator INTEGER (0..15),

mcsAndTBS INTEGER (0..31),

frequencyHoppingOffset

INTEGER (1.. maxNrofPhysicalResourceBlocks-1)

pathlossReferenceIndex

INTEGER (0..maxNrofPUSCH-PathlossReferenceRS

...

} OPTIONAL, -- Need R

...

CP OFDM Sequence Generation

When 3GPP 38.211 was released, the first thing I checked was waveform equation since I
long for the final conclusion to come out. Following is the waveform equation specified in
waveform equation of the legacy LTE from 36.211 for comparison.
What is your first impression ? You may think NR(5G) waveform is much simpler than the L
though these two equation look very differently but if you take a closer look you would no
very small. In LTE, the waveform generation equation (basically IFFT equation) is split into
remove the point located at DC location (i.e, at frequency = 0 in baseband). In NR(5G), th
required any more and the full IFFT equation is combine into one.

Is that all ? NR waveform generation is simpler than LTE waveform generation (at least m

It is not all. As you see in Frame Structure page, in NR(5G) several difference numerology
subcarrier spacing and symbol length) are supported whearas in LTE there is only one num
different numerology are not completely new waveform on its own. All of them can be der
mathematical equation by scaling up and down a couple of paramters as illustrated below
Transform Precoding

As mentioned above, unlike LTE NR has two options for UL Waveform. One is CP-OFDM (sa
and the other one is DFT-s-OFDM which is same as LTE UL waveform. Transform Precoding
create DFT-s-OFDM waveform as highlighed below. Whether UE need to use CP-OFDM or D
determined by following RRC Parameter.

 RACH-ConfigCommon.msg3-transformPrecoding(msg3-tp)

 PUSCH-Config.transformPrecoding(PUSCH-tp)
In term of functionality, Transform Precoding is to spread UL data in a special way to reduc
Average Power Ratio) of the waveform. In terms of mathematics, Transform Precoding is ju
DFT(Discrete Fourier Transform) as you see in the equation shown below.

If UE is to use multi-layer (UL MIMO) the equation is as below (this is the original form des
6.3.1.4)

If UE is to use single layer, the equation can be simplified as below. I would look more obv
Precoding is basically DFT.

Reference

[1] 38.211 NR;Physical channels and modulation(Release 15)