4 Overview (informative)

22.4683GPPGroup Communication System Enablers (GCSE)Release 17TS

4.1 Service description of a Group Communication service

A Group Communication Service is intended to provide a fast and efficient mechanism to distribute the same content to multiple users in a controlled manner as an enabler for a variety of services.

As an example, the concept of group communications is used extensively in the operation of classical Land Mobile Radio (LMR) systems used for, but not limited to, Public Safety organizations. At the moment, the primary use of a Group Communication Service in LMR is to provide "Push to Talk" (PTT) functionality, so a Group Communication Service based on the 3GPP system should enable PTT voice communications with comparable performance.

Another example is network controlled interactive services. 5G UEs will include new forms of devices, e.g. VR/AR devices, robots, game consoles, etc. These will be used in diverse environments including public spaces, in educational institutions and in the work place. These supported scenarios entail efficient support of 5G UEs executing group communication applications, specifically gaming and interactive data exchange applications with delay sensitivity and demanding throughput.

The service should allow flexible modes of operation as the users and the environment they are operating in evolves. For example, the capabilities of the 3GPP system allow for broadband communication, so Group Communication Service is expected to support, voice, video or, more general, data communication. Also the 3GPP system can allow users to communicate to several groups at the same time in parallel e.g. voice to one group, different streams of video or data to several other groups.

The users of Group Communication Service are organised into groups; a user can be member of more than one group.

4.2 Relation to Group Communication System Enablers

The requirements listed in the present document shall serve as requirements to develop enablers; i.e. modular functions and open interfaces (e.g. a resource efficient distribution mechanism) that can be used to design Group Communication Services. This is to flexibly accommodate the different operational requirements on Group Communication Services that are expected to be different for various types of user groups (e.g. police or fire brigade), or from country to country.