5G RAN3.

0 Hyper Cell Feature Introduction

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 Change History

Version Description Date Owner

0.1 Draft Aug 3, 2019 Cheng Zhulin

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 Contents
• 1. Hyper Cell Feature Information

• 2. Solution Overview

• 3. Impacts

• 4. Implementation

• 5. Verification

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 1. Hyper Cell Feature Information E Enhancement
N New

Version Feature Name Change Remarks

5G RAN3.0 Hyper Cell N Multiple physical cells combination

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1. Hyper Cell Feature Information - Feature Planning

Feature Name Version Function

A maximum of 12 physical cells can be combined
5G RAN3.0
into a logical cell.
Hyper Cell
5G RAN3.1 Mixed configuration is supported.

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 2. Solution Overview – Why
Frequent handovers in high-speed mobility scenarios The inter-cell SSB interference in SSB wide beam scenarios is
affect user experience. strong.
• Handover failures result in a high service drop rate.
• Reduce SSB interfere to improve the service drop rate.
• Data transmission interruptions during handovers affect the
throughput.

HO HO

Cell 0 Cell 1 Cell 2

High-speed railway

SSBs interfere with each other in the overlapping area,

and the value of SSB SINR of the entire network is low.

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 Solution Overview
Hyper cell in which multiple TRPs are configured with the same PCI
and CGI.

HO HO

Cell 0 TRP 1 No HO TRP 2 No HO TRP 3 No HO TRP 4 Cell 2

• Hyper Cell is a networking technology that combines multiple physical cells (TRPs) into a logical cell. Different physical cells are
configured with the same PCI and CGI.
– When a UE moves between different TRPs, handovers do not occur. The UE is unaware of the cell edge and user
experience is improved.
• Different TRPs are scheduled independently. Each UE can transmit and receive data through only one TRP at a time.
• The resources related to all the UEs in all the TRPs such the SRS, CSI-RS, and PUCCH (SR/CSI) resources are configured in a
centralized manner at layer 3. The serving TRP of each UE informs the UE of the air interface resources that are allocated to it.

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 Solution Overview

Service TRP Selection Inter-TRP Coordinated Scheduling Seamless Handover Between TRPs

When a UE in the hyper cell accesses the The downlink common control messages including When a UE moves between different TRPs
network, the gNodeB selects a TRP with the the SSB, SIB, and paging for each TRP in the in a hyper cell, the gNodeB measures the
highest RSRP value as the serving TRP for hyper cell are scheduled in a unified manner. The uplink SRS RSRP in each TRP. Based on
the UE based on the preamble RSRP values system information for each TRP is the same and the measurement result, the gNodeB
measured by the UE. The UE accesses the occupies the same time-frequency resources. determines whether there is a candidate
network through the serving TRP. The uplink common control information including TRP with a higher RSRP value. If a
the information on the PUCCH, PRACH, and SRS candidate TRP with a higher RSRP value
for each TRP in the hyper cell is scheduled in a exists, the gNodeB selects the candidate
unified manner. The gNodeB allocates the same TRP as a new serving TRP, which then
time-frequency resources to each TRP. performs scheduling and allocates resources
to the UE. RRC signaling reconfiguration is
The uplink and downlink UE-dedicated signaling
not required and seamless handover
and data for each TRP in the hyper cell are
between TRPs is achieved in the hyper cell.
independently scheduled and allocated by the
serving TRP through which the UE accesses the
network.

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Solution Overview
TRP 0 TRP 1 TRP 2 TRP 3

As each TRP in the hyper cell needs to establish a user instance for the UE to perform measurement, the maximum number of
UEs in a hyper cell decreases.

Maximum number Maximum number of Maximum number of

Maximum number RRC_CONNECTED Maximum number of
of baseband RRC_CONNECTED
Board Type TRX Type of TRPs in a hyper UEs served by a RRC_CONNECTED
processing units in baseband processing UEs in a common UEs in a hyper cell
cell* cell
a hyper cell unit
64T 12 2 1200 400 200
UBBPg3a 32T 12 2 1200 400 200
8T 12 2 1200 400 200
32T 6 1 1200 400 200
UBBPfw2
8T 6 1 1200 400 200

* [For Korea] Currently, six TRPs served by one baseband processing unit can be combined into a hyper cell.

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 Solution Overview

Common Cell Hyper Cell

Handover RRC-signaling-triggered handover No RRC-signaling-triggered handover between

TRPs
Capacity After combination, the number of UEs that served by a hyper cell increases, which leads to
prolonged SRS period, and decreased throughput in heavy-load scenarios.
SU*1 4 layers in the downlink 4 layers in the downlink
2 layers in the uplink 2 layers in the uplink
MU 16 layers in the downlink 16 layers per TRP in the downlink
8 layers in the uplink 8 layers per TRP in the uplink

*1 The preceding table uses a 2T4R UE as an example.

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Impacts

Positive impacts
 The coverage of the logical cell is expanded, reducing the number of handovers, which prevents the service interruptions or UE
throughput decrease caused by frequent handovers.

Negative impacts
 The maximum number of UEs in the hyper cell decreases compared with that before combination.
 UEs in hyper cells cannot use the BWP for power saving purposes. Therefore, UEs in hyper cells consume more power than
UEs in common cells.
 Spectrum sharing is performed on a logical cell basis and the load of a hyper cell is the average load of the multiple TRPs.
Therefore, after spectrum sharing is enabled, TRPs with high load may be congested.

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Implementation
Network planning requirements
• TRP ID planning
The tracking reference signal (TRS) resources of a common cell are allocated based on the different results of PCI mod 6 to reduce
interference. The TRS resources of each TRP in a hyper cell are allocated based on the different results of TRP ID mod 6. If two TRPs
have the same value of TRP ID mod 6, the TRS resource location of the two TRPs is the same, which results in interference and affects
time and frequency offsets tracking.
In addition, the TRS scrambling code of the hyper cell is cell-level scrambling code. Two TRPs in the hyper cell using the same TRS
may lead to UE timing offset. Therefore, such situation should be avoided in network planning.

Solution 1: Network planning based on the live network Solution 2: Network planning based on new network

1. Stagger the results of TRP ID mod 6 of the neighboring TRPs 1. Stagger the results of TRP ID mod 6 of the neighboring TRPs in the
in the hyper cell and that of the neighboring TRPs in neighboring hyper cell.
hyper cells. 2. Stagger the results of TRP ID mod 6 of the hyper cell and its
2. Stagger the results of TRP ID mod 6 of the hyper cell and the neighboring cells.
result of PCI mod 6 of its neighboring common cells to reserve 3. It is recommended that the TRP ID and PCI of the neighboring
the live network planning. common cells be set the same to reduce network planning complexity.
3. Obtain the neighboring cells of the hyper cell by collecting all 4. It is recommended that the ranges of TRP ID and PCI be set the
the neighboring cells of the physical cells before combination same to reduce network planning complexity (0–1007).
5. The PCI of a hyper cell is the same as the TRP ID of one of the
and deleting the cells in the hyper cell.
TRPs in the hyper cell.
4. The PCI of the hyper cell is the same as the PCI of one of the
TRPs before combination.

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Implementation
Network planning optimization
• Adjust the handover parameters based on actual situation to ensure timely handovers and avoid ping-pong handovers.
• Avoid long-distance cross-TRP coverage in the hyper cell.
The SRS timing of the UE is aligned with that of the serving TRP.
Therefore, there is a time difference between the time the non-serving
The gNodeB compares the SRS RSRP of the TRP receives SRS and the time the serving TRP receives SRS.
UE in each TRP and determines whether to If d2 – d1 > 0, the SRS received by the non-serving TRP is delayed.
perform a TRP handover. Serving TRP If d2 – d1 < 0, the non-serving TRP receives the SRS in advance.

Non-serving TRP SRS timing delay ∆t2

∆t2
d1

TRP1 TRP2
Serving TRP SRS
∆t1
d1
SRS SRS d2-d1
Non-serving TRP SRS timing advance ∆t1
The following parameters can be adjusted to ensure timely handovers and
avoid ping-pong handovers.
The NRDUCellSrsMeas.HyperCellTrpHoDeltaRsrp parameter indicates the d2
handover threshold. The default value is 1 dB and the minimum value is 0.5
dB. Non-serving TRP
The NRDUCellRsvdExt.RsvdParam12 parameter indicates the number of
handover decisions. The default value is 2 and the value ranges from 1 to 50. The SRS timing difference affects the SRS measurement accuracy, and a large time
The interval for handover decisions is 320 ms in a low-speed cell, and 80 ms difference may result in failure in timely handover.
in a high-speed cell. Therefore, a cross-TRP coverage with a distance exceeding 600 m should be avoided.

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Implementation
Network planning optimization
• Improve the handover success rate.
If the SSB beam is the wide beam, with diversity gain, the SSB power received by the UE is
increased at a TRP overlapping area in a hyper cell. As the UE performs handovers based on
the SSB power, the incoming handovers in a hyper cell may occur in advance compared with
that before the hyper cell is formed. If there are full buffer UEs causing strong interference to
UEs in the handover area of the source cell, the incoming handover success rate may
decrease in the overlapping area.
Hyper cell Hyper cell
TRP 0 TRP 1 Optimization method:
1. Increase the Msg2 and Msg4 power by 3 dB.
MOD NRDUCELLRSVD: NrDuCellId=xx, RsvdParam127=19; RsvdParam158=19;
Incoming handover Common 2. Reduce the SSB power of some TRPs without affecting the main coverage of the SSB.
occurs in advance in the cell
overlapping area.
The outgoing handovers in a hyper cell is delayed compared with that before the hyper cell is
formed. If there are full buffer UEs causing strong interference to UEs in the handover area of
the target cell, the outgoing handover success rate may decrease in the overlapping area.
Hyper cell Hyper cell
TRP 0 TRP 1
Optimization method:
1. Lower the outgoing handover threshold of the hyper cell.
Common
Outgoing handover is 2. Reduce the SSB power of some TRPs without affecting the main coverage of the SSB.
delayed in the cell
overlapping area.

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Implementation
1. Specifications
• Number of RRC_CONNECTED UEs = Min (number of RRC_CONNECTED UEs per board/number of TRPs, number of UEs in a single cell)
• A maximum of 12 TRPs are supported by each hyper cell.
• One hyper cell can be served by a maximum of two UBBPg3s, two UBBPg2as or one UBBPfw. The maximum number of TRPs support by each
baseband processing unit is the same as the number of cells supported.

2. Constraints
• Mixed configuration of different types of baseband processing units is not supported. Only TRPs using the same type of baseband processing unit
in the same BBU can form a hyper cell.
• Mixed configuration of different types of cells is not supported. Each baseband processing unit supports only one hyper cell. The common cell and
hyper cell cannot be configured on the same baseband processing unit.
• Mixed configuration of TRPs with different number of antennas is not supported. The number of RF channels of all TRPs in the hyper cell must be
the same.

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Implementation
1. License requirement

Feature ID Feature Name Model Sales Unit

FOFD-030205 Hyper Cell NR0S00HPCL00 Per TRP

2. Software requirement
• Prerequisite function: none
• Mutually exclusive functions are shown in the table below.
Function Name Function Switch Reference

UL COMP INTRA_GNB_UL_COMP_SW option of CoMP

the
NRDuCellAlgoSwitch.CompSwitch
parameter
Intra-band CA INTRA_BAND_CA_SW option of the Carrier Aggregation
NRDUCellAlgoSwitch.CaAlgoSwitch
parameter
UL and DL decoupling NRDUCell.DuplexMode parameter set UL and DL Decoupling
to CELL_SUL
BWP Power Saving BWP2_SWITCH option of the UE Power Saving
NRDUCellUePwrSaving.BwpPwrSavi
ngSw parameter

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Implementation
1. MML command examples
Activation command examples
For details about the configuration examples, see Cell Management. This section describes only the command examples that are specific to hyper cell.
//Adding a hyper cell
ADD NRDUCELL: NrDuCellId=215, NrDuCellName="255_TDD",DuplexMode=CELL_TDD, CellId=255, PhysicalCellId=7,
FrequencyBand=N77,DlNarfcn=646666,UlBandwidth=CELL_BW_100M, DlBandwidth=CELL_BW_100M, SlotAssignment=4_1_DDDSU,SlotStructure=SS2, TrackingAreaId=0,
SsbFreqPos=8012,NrDuCellNetworkingMode=HYPER_CELL, LogicalRootSequenceIndex=0;

//Adding all the TRPs for the hyper cell

ADD NRDUCELLTRP: NrDuCellTrpId=0, NrDuCellId=215,TxRxMode=8T8R, BasebandEqmId=0, MaxTransmitPower=300,CpriCompression=3DOT2_COMPRESSION; ADD
NRDUCELLCOVERAGE: NrDuCellTrpId=0, NrDuCellCoverageId=1, SectorEqmId=1;

ADD NRDUCELLTRP: NrDuCellTrpId=1, NrDuCellId=215, TxRxMode=8T8R,BasebandEqmId=0, MaxTransmitPower=300,CpriCompression=3DOT2_COMPRESSION; ADD

NRDUCELLCOVERAGE: NrDuCellTrpId=1, NrDuCellCoverageId=2, SectorEqmId=2;

//Activating the cell

ACT NRCELL:NrCellId=215;

• Deactivation command examples

Change a hyper cell to a common cell.

//Deactivating a cell
DEA NRCELL: NrCellId=215;

//Reserving only one TRP for a common cell and deleting the other TRPs
TRP RMV NRDUCELLCOVERAGE:NrDuCellTrpId=1; RMV NRDUCELLTRP: NrDuCellTrpId=1;

//Changing the cell networking mode to common cell

MOD NRDUCELL: NrDuCellId=215, NrDuCellNetworkingMode=NORMAL_CELL;

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Activation Verification

1. Check the cell status.

Run the DSP NRDUCELL command to check the status of the hyper cell. If the value of Cell Available State in the command output is
Available, the cell has been successfully set up.

Run the DSP NRDUCELLTRP command to check the status of TRPs. If the value of NR DU Cell TRP State in the command output is Available,
the TRPs have been successfully set up.

2. Verify the cell function.

Observe the counters in the following function subsets to check the service status of the hyper cell:

Hyper Cell TRP MAC Measurement

Hyper Cell TRP PRB Measurement

Hyper Cell TRP User Number Measurement

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