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Overview of NR Enhancements for Extended Reality (XR) in 3GPP 5G-Advanced

Margarita Gapeyenko, Stefano Paris, Markus Isomaki, Boyan Yanakiev, Abolfazl Amiri, Benoist Sébire, Jorma Kaikkonen, Chunli Wu, Klaus I. Pedersen

TL;DR

The paper provides a tutorial-style survey of 3GPP 5G-Advanced Release 18 XR enhancements, detailing adaptations across NR radio access and core networks to support low latency, high capacity XR services. It introduces key concepts such as L4S-based adaptive latency control, PDU Set and Data Burst structures, and application-aware QoS and scheduling, then demonstrates capacity and power-saving gains through system-level simulations. Notable findings include the benefits of Refined Long BSR in reducing overhead, the performance uplift from application-aware scheduling using PDU set information, and the efficacy of adaptive DRX (A-DRX) in balancing XR satisfaction with UE power consumption. The paper also outlines Release 19 directions focused on further capacity gains, advanced signaling for PDU set QoS, selective RRM measurement skipping, and broader end-to-end XR enablement across the 5G-Advanced stack.

Abstract

Extended reality (XR) is unlocking numerous possibilities and continues attracting individuals and larger groups across different business sectors. With Virtual reality (VR), Augmented reality (AR), or Mixed reality (MR) it is possible to improve the way we access, deliver and exchange information in education, health care, entertainment, and many other aspects of our daily lives. However, to fully exploit the potential of XR, it is important to provide reliable, fast and secure wireless connectivity to the users of XR and that requires refining existing solutions and tailoring those to support XR services. This article presents a tutorial on 3GPP 5G-Advanced Release 18 XR activities, summarizing physical as well as higher layer enhancements introduced for New Radio considering the specifics of XR. In addition, we also describe enhancements across 5G system architecture that impacted radio access network. Furthermore, the paper provides system-level simulation results for several Release 18 enhancements to show their benefits in terms of XR capacity and power saving gains. Finally, it concludes with an overview of future work in Release 19 that continues developing features to support XR services.

Overview of NR Enhancements for Extended Reality (XR) in 3GPP 5G-Advanced

TL;DR

The paper provides a tutorial-style survey of 3GPP 5G-Advanced Release 18 XR enhancements, detailing adaptations across NR radio access and core networks to support low latency, high capacity XR services. It introduces key concepts such as L4S-based adaptive latency control, PDU Set and Data Burst structures, and application-aware QoS and scheduling, then demonstrates capacity and power-saving gains through system-level simulations. Notable findings include the benefits of Refined Long BSR in reducing overhead, the performance uplift from application-aware scheduling using PDU set information, and the efficacy of adaptive DRX (A-DRX) in balancing XR satisfaction with UE power consumption. The paper also outlines Release 19 directions focused on further capacity gains, advanced signaling for PDU set QoS, selective RRM measurement skipping, and broader end-to-end XR enablement across the 5G-Advanced stack.

Abstract

Extended reality (XR) is unlocking numerous possibilities and continues attracting individuals and larger groups across different business sectors. With Virtual reality (VR), Augmented reality (AR), or Mixed reality (MR) it is possible to improve the way we access, deliver and exchange information in education, health care, entertainment, and many other aspects of our daily lives. However, to fully exploit the potential of XR, it is important to provide reliable, fast and secure wireless connectivity to the users of XR and that requires refining existing solutions and tailoring those to support XR services. This article presents a tutorial on 3GPP 5G-Advanced Release 18 XR activities, summarizing physical as well as higher layer enhancements introduced for New Radio considering the specifics of XR. In addition, we also describe enhancements across 5G system architecture that impacted radio access network. Furthermore, the paper provides system-level simulation results for several Release 18 enhancements to show their benefits in terms of XR capacity and power saving gains. Finally, it concludes with an overview of future work in Release 19 that continues developing features to support XR services.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 22 sections, 15 figures, 2 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. XR Traffic Model
  3. XR Enhancements In Release 18
  4. Support For Adaptive Low Latency Traffic
  5. Concept of PDU Set And Data Burst
  6. Application Awareness
  7. PDU Set Based QoS Handling
  8. Mapping of PDU SET to QoS and DRB
  9. RRC UE Assistance Information
  10. Capacity Enhancements
  11. Configured Grant (CG) Enhancements
  12. PDU Set Handling/Discarding
  13. Buffer Status Report/Delay Status Report
  14. Power Saving Enhancements
  15. Evaluation of XR Enhancements over NR
  16. ...and 7 more sections

Figures (15)

  • Figure 1: 3GPP XR traffic model.
  • Figure 2: Structure of Section \ref{['sec:rel18_enhanc']} summarizing enhancements in Release 18 and highlighting specification impact.
  • Figure 3: Illustration of L4S methods specified in 3GPP. Method 1: RAN performs the ECN marking. Method 2: RAN provides the ECN marking probability to UPF, which performs the marking on RAN’s behalf.
  • Figure 4: Relation between data burst, frames, and PDU sets.
  • Figure 5: Example of application awareness: Information about PDU sets is transferred across 5GS.
  • ...and 10 more figures