February 5, 2021 Approval of ITU’s IMT-2020 Wireless Interface Recommendation Items

Concerning the fifth-generation mobile communications system (5G, IMT-2020^*1), a draft of new recommendation items for wireless interfaces^*2 was approved as a result of postal voting by the member countries of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

1. Overview

The 17th meeting of the ITU’s Fifth Research Committee of the Wireless Communication Division (ITU-R SG 5) was held on Monday, November 23, 2020, where the delegation of each participating country confirmed the draft recommendations. Accordingly, the draft recommendations were subjected to approval from the member countries of the ITU for postal voting for adoption. In response to this, the Radiocommunication Bureau (BR) submitted the draft recommendations for the postal voting of the member countries from Tuesday, December 1, 2020, through Monday, February 1, 2021.
As a result of the postal voting, there was no objection from any member countries to the draft, and the recommendations were approved and issued as ITU-R Recommendation M.2150.

2. Future plans

Regarding the IMT-2020 wireless interface, the 5D Working Group of the Fifth Research Committee of the Wireless Communication Division (ITU-R SG 5 WP 5D) will continue reviewing this recommendation. The review of ITU-R SG 5 WP 5D will depend on the results of the re-evaluation of the two wireless interface candidate technologies, which were not recommended this time, and the development of other technologies, including the completion of the new release (Release 17) of 3GPP^*3.

• *1
  IMT-2020: Short for International Mobile Telecommunications-2020, also referred to as 5G.
• *2

  Wireless interfaces: Wireless communications methods that include defined communications, multiplexing, multiple access, and modulation modes.

  In 3G, the following six are recommended as ITU-R Recommendation M.1457.

  • IMT-2000 CDMA Direct Spread (Proposal of Japan/Europe, W-CDMA)
  • IMT-2000 CDMA Multi-Carrier (Proposal of the United States, CDMA2000)
  • IMT-2000 CDMA TDD (Proposal of China and other countries, TD-CDMA and TD-SCDMA)
  • IMT-2000 TDMA Single-Carrier (Proposal of the United States, EDGE)
  • IMT-2000 FDMA/TDMA (Proposal of Europe, DECT)
  • IMT-2000 OFDMA TDD WMAN (Proposal of the IEEE, Mobile WiMAX)

  In 4G, the following two are recommended as ITU-R Recommendation M.2012.

  • LTE-Advanced (Proposal of 3GPP)
  • WirelessMAN-Advanced (Proposal of IEEE, WiMAX2)

  In 5G, the following three have been recommended as ITU-R Recommendation M.1457 this time.

  • 3GPP 5G-SRIT (Proposal of 3GPP, a combination of 5G NR and LTE)
  • 3GPP 5G-RIT (Proposal of 3GPP, 5G NR alone)
  • 5Gi (Proposal of India)

  RIT: An abbreviation of “Radio Interface Technology.”
  SRIT: An abbreviation of “Set of RIT” (Set of Radio Interface Technologies).

• *3
  3GPP: An abbreviation of “3rd Generation Partnership Project.” It is a project of the Standards Development Organization (SDO) jointly established by Japan, the United States, Europe, China, South Korea, and India in 1998 to examine and formulate specifications for mobile communications systems after 3G.
  The technical specifications of 3GPP in the ITU-R recommendation cover releases 15 and 16.