| 3 | | The primary purpose of the NR Platform is to validate and showcase [//https://www.interdigital.com/ InterDigital] developed standards-based technology for research. With an emphasis on NR L1 technology development, L1 can optionally be integrated with a 3rd party NR protocol stack. Hence alignment of a common L1-L2 interface with a 3rd party protocol stack is selected to ease with the foreseen integration. In the interim, a Thin L23 is developed in order to enable the validation and demonstration of the L1 technology without the necessity of using a full NR protocol stack. |
| | 3 | InterDigital has developed for research and development purposes their FPGA based, NR Rel-15 mmWave prototype platform. Each Mast Head unit (MHU) contains a 64-element antenna with +40dBm RMS, Anokiwave quad analog phased array chips, 28GHz up/down conversion from/to 5-6GHz IF that is housed in an IP67 weather proof enclosure. |
| | 4 | The baseband unit, Modem Processor Unit (MPU) is designed according to 3GPP Rel-15 PHY specifications and is implemented in a Xilinx MPSOC FPGA. The MPU contains two Xilinx Zu15EG SOM modules (2nd for future use), IF frontend, USB 2.0/3.0, SFP ports, Gigabit Ethernet interfaces and a SMA connection to the MHU. |
| | 5 | The MPU is configurable as either a 5G UE or gNB with the appropriate PHY, thin MAC/RLC functionality. |
| | 6 | The current implementation supports a single UE and gNB, however the system was designed to support 2 UEs using different gNB beams and appropriate changes to the UE scheduler. |
| 7 | | As shown in the block-diagram figure, the NR Node consists of one Mast Head Unit (MHU) and one Modem Processor Unit (MPU). Each NR node can be configured for use as either a gNB or a UE where at least one gNB and one UE are required to complete a NR system. |
| 8 | | The MHU consists of a Digital Board and an RF board. The MPU contains 2 [https://www.trenz-electronic.de/en/ Trenz] !SoMs that can be used to process all real time signals (e.g. encoder, CHEST, CHEQ) and all buffered signals (e.g. decoder, interfaces). Only one SoM has been implemented and the 2nd SoM is available for future features. |
| | 10 | The NR platform is a TDD system with a baseband that supports FR2, 120KHz sub-carrier spacing, fixed frame format (modified format 32), 200MHz bandwidth, SISO, NR LDPC coding for data channels, convolutional coder* for PUCCH and PDCCH and 8 SSB beams with CSI reporting for link adaptation. The MHU/MPU system supports horizontal beam angles of: ± 45deg, ± 30deg, ± 15 deg, 0deg and a single fixed vertical beam. |
| | 11 | The Rel-15 PHY supports DL and UL channels: PDSCH, PDCCH, PUSCH, PUCCCH, PBCH, PRACH, PSS. The PHY supports QPSK, 16QAM and 64QAM, DL MCS up to 18 and UL MCS up to 27 using the full 132 PRBs. The system is designed to support peak UL speeds up to 100Mbps and peak DL speeds up to 238Mbps. |
| | 12 | The UE and gNB each have a NR FAPI-like interface between the PHY and MAC that facilitates the option to integrate the PHY with a 3rd party L23 protocol stacks. |
| 10 | | The platform is designed to support FR2 bands (26 - 29 GHz) with channel bandwidths of up to 200 MHz. It is a TDD system with 120 kHz subcarrier spaced OFDM, PSS synchronization and LDPC supporting PDCCH, PDSCH, PUCCH, PUSCH, and PBCH physical channels (no PRACH) . The platform also currently supports: Cell Search, 2-step RACH, HARQ, and beam management with beam steering angles: 0, +/-15, 30, 40 (total of 7 beams). |
| | 14 | The slot format used on the platform is slot format 32, modified by using 2 symbols for DTx purposes to allow for Tx/RX radio switching delays. |
| | 15 | |
| | 16 | [[Image(slotformat32.png)]] |
| | 17 | |
| | 18 | || Symbols used for DL and UL shared and control channels || Symbols used for PSS and PBCH during slots carrying SSB information. || Symbols used for PRACH during PRACH slots || |
| | 19 | || [[Image(slots1.png, 250px)]] || [[Image(slots2.png, 250px)]] || [[Image(slots3.png, 250px)]] || |
