6.2 Formats and parameters

36.3213GPPEvolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA)Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol specificationRelease 17TS

6.2.1 MAC header for DL-SCH, UL-SCH and MCH

The MAC header is of variable size and consists of the following fields:

– LCID: The Logical Channel ID field identifies the logical channel instance of the corresponding MAC SDU or the type of the corresponding MAC control element or padding as described in tables 6.2.1-1, 6.2.1-2 and 6.2.1-4 for the DL-SCH, UL-SCH and MCH respectively. There is one LCID field for each MAC SDU, MAC control element or padding included in the MAC PDU. In addition to that, one or two additional LCID fields are included in the MAC PDU, when single-byte or two-byte padding is required but cannot be achieved by padding at the end of the MAC PDU. If the LCID field is set to "10000", an additional octet is present in the MAC PDU subheader containing the eLCID field and this additional octet follows the octet containing LCID field. A UE of Category 0, as specified in TS 36.306 [12], except when in enhanced coverage, and unicastFreqHoppingInd-r13 is indicated in the BR version of SI message carrying SystemInformationBlockType2, and UE supports frequency hopping for unicast, as specified in TS 36.306 [12], shall indicate CCCH using LCID "01011", a BL UE with support for frequency hopping for unicast, as specified in TS 36.306 [12], and a UE in enhanced coverage with support for frequency hopping for unicast, as specified in TS 36.306 [12], shall if unicastFreqHoppingInd-r13 is indicated in the BR version of SI message carrying SystemInformationBlockType2 indicate CCCH using LCID "01100", otherwise the UE shall indicate CCCH using LCID "00000". A short DCQR may be included in the MAC PDU subheader with LCID set to "00000", "01011", "01100" or "01101". The LCID field size is 5 bits;

– eLCID: The extended Logical Channel ID field identifies the logical channel instance of the corresponding MAC SDU or the type of the corresponding MAC control element as described in tables 6.2.1-1a and 6.2.1-2a for the DL-SCH and UL-SCH respectively. The size of the eLCID field is 6 bits.

– L: The Length field indicates the length of the corresponding MAC SDU or variable-sized MAC control element in bytes. There is one L field per MAC PDU subheader except for the last subheader and subheaders corresponding to fixed-sized MAC control elements. The size of the L field is indicated by the F field and F2 field;

– F: The Format field indicates the size of the Length field as indicated in table 6.2.1-3. There is one F field per MAC PDU subheader except for the last subheader and subheaders corresponding to fixed-sized MAC control elements and except for when F2 is set to 1. The size of the F field is 1 bit. If the F field is included; if the size of the MAC SDU or variable-sized MAC control element is less than 128 bytes, the value of the F field is set to 0, otherwise it is set to 1;

– F2: Except when this field is used for short DCQR, the Format2 field indicates the size of the Length field as indicated in table 6.2.1-3. For short DCQR, the mapping of F2 field to short DCQR value is described in table 6.2.1-5. There is one F2 field per MAC PDU subheader. The size of the F2 field is 1 bit. Except when this field is used for short DCQR, if the size of the MAC SDU or variable-sized MAC control element is larger than 32767 bytes, and if the corresponding subheader is not the last subheader, the value of the F2 field is set to 1, otherwise it is set to 0;

– E: The Extension field is a flag indicating if more fields are present in the MAC header or not. The E field is set to "1" to indicate another set of at least R/F2/E/LCID fields. The E field is set to "0" to indicate that either a MAC SDU, a MAC control element or padding starts at the next byte;

– R: Except when this field is used for short DCQR, reserved bit, set to "0". For short DCQR, the mapping of R field to short DCQR value is described in table 6.2.1-5.

The MAC header and subheaders are octet aligned.

Table 6.2.1-1 Values of LCID for DL-SCH

Codepoint/Index

LCID values

00000

CCCH

00001-01010

Identity of the logical channel

01011-01110

Reserved

01111

Differential Koffset

10000

Extended logical channel ID field

10001

DCQR Command

10010

Activation/Deactivation of PDCP Duplication

10011

Hibernation (1 octet)

10100

Hibernation (4 octets)

10101

Activation/Deactivation of CSI-RS

10110

Recommended bit rate

10111

SC-PTM Stop Indication

11000

Activation/Deactivation (4 octets)

11001

SC-MCCH, SC-MTCH (see note)

11010

Long DRX Command

11011

Activation/Deactivation (1 octet)

11100

UE Contention Resolution Identity

11101

Timing Advance Command

11110

DRX Command

11111

Padding

NOTE: Both SC-MCCH and SC-MTCH cannot be multiplexed with other logical channels in the same MAC PDU except for Padding and SC-PTM Stop Indication

Table 6.2.1-1a Values of eLCID for DL-SCH

Codepoint

Index

LCID values

000000-000110

32-38

Identity of the logical channel

000111-111111

39-95

Reserved

For NB-IoT only the following LCID values for DL-SCH are applicable: CCCH, Identity of the logical channel, DCQR Command, SC-PTM Stop Indication, SC-MCCH/SC-MTCH, UE Contention Resolution Identity, Timing Advance Command, DRX Command, Differential Koffset and Padding.

Table 6.2.1-2 Values of LCID for UL-SCH

Codepoint/Index

LCID values

00000

CCCH

00001-01010

Identity of the logical channel

01011

CCCH

01100

CCCH

01101

CCCH and Extended Power Headroom Report

01110

Reserved

01111

Timing Advance Report

10000

Extended logical channel ID field

10001

DCQR and AS RAI

10010

AUL confirmation (4 octets)

10011

AUL confirmation (1 octet)

10100

Recommended bit rate query

10101

SPS confirmation

10110

Truncated Sidelink BSR

10111

Sidelink BSR

11000

Dual Connectivity Power Headroom Report

11001

Extended Power Headroom Report

11010

Power Headroom Report

11011

C-RNTI

11100

Truncated BSR

11101

Short BSR

11110

Long BSR

11111

Padding

Table 6.2.1-2a Values of eLCID for UL-SCH

Codepoint

Index

LCID values

000000-000110

32-38

Identity of the logical channel

000111-111111

39-95

Reserved

For NB-IoT only the following LCID values for UL-SCH are applicable: CCCH (LCID "00000"), Identity of the logical channel, CCCH and Extended Power Headroom Report, DCQR and AS RAI, SPS confirmation, C-RNTI, Short BSR, Timing Advance Report and Padding.

Table 6.2.1-3 Values of F and F2 fields:

Index of F2

Index of F

Size of Length field (in bits)

0

0

7

1

15

1

16

Table 6.2.1-4 Values of LCID for MCH

Index

LCID values

00000

MCCH (see note)

00001-11100

MTCH

11101

Reserved

11110

MCH Scheduling Information or Extended MCH Scheduling Information

11111

Padding

NOTE: If there is no MCCH on MCH, an MTCH could use this value.

Table 6.2.1-5: Values of R and F2 fields for short DCQR

Index of R

Index of F2

Short DCQR value

0

0

No short DCQR

0

1

Short DCQR 1

1

0

Short DCQR 2

1

1

Short DCQR 3

6.2.2 MAC header for Random Access Response

The MAC header is of variable size and consists of the following fields:

– E: The Extension field is a flag indicating if more fields are present in the MAC header or not. The E field is set to "1" to indicate at least another set of E/T/RAPID fields follows. The E field is set to "0" to indicate that a MAC RAR or padding starts at the next byte;

– T: The Type field is a flag indicating whether the MAC subheader contains a Random Access ID or a Backoff Indicator. The T field is set to "0" to indicate the presence of a Backoff Indicator field in the subheader (BI). The T field is set to "1" to indicate the presence of a Random Access Preamble ID field in the subheader (RAPID);

– R: Reserved bit, set to "0";

– BI: The Backoff Indicator field identifies the overload condition in the cell. The size of the BI field is 4 bits;

– RAPID: The Random Access Preamble IDentifier field identifies the transmitted Random Access Preamble (see clause 5.1.3). The size of the RAPID field is 6 bits.

The MAC header and subheaders are octet aligned.

NOTE: For NB-IoT, the Random Access Preamble IDentifier field corresponds to the start subcarrier index.

6.2.3 MAC payload for Random Access Response

The MAC RAR is of fixed size and consists of the following fields:

– R: Reserved bit, set to "0". For a BL UE or a UE in CE, this bit is set to "1" to indicate that an UL Grant in Random Access Response is for EDT;

– Timing Advance Command: The Timing Advance Command field indicates the index value TA (0, 1, 2… 1282) used to control the amount of timing adjustment that the MAC entity has to apply (see clause 4.2.3 of TS 36.213 [2]), except for NB-IoT UEs using preamble format 2, where the Timing Advance Command field indicates the index value TA (0, 1, 2… 1536). The size of the Timing Advance Command field is 11 bits;

– UL Grant: The Uplink Grant field indicates the resources to be used on the uplink (see clause 6.2 of TS 36.213 [2], or for NB-IoT UEs, see clause 16.3.3 of TS 36.213 [2]). The size of the UL Grant field is 20 bits, except for NB-IoT UEs, where the size of UL grant field is 15 bits, and except for BL UEs and UEs in enhanced coverage level 2 or 3, where the size of the UL grant field is 12 bits.

– ER: Extended RAPID bits, indicating the two least significant bits of extended RAPID used when PRACH preamble format 2 is transmitted.

– Temporary C-RNTI: The Temporary C-RNTI field indicates the temporary identity that is used by the MAC entity during Random Access. The size of the Temporary C-RNTI field is 16 bits.

The MAC RAR is octet aligned.

6.2.4 MAC header for SL-SCH

The MAC header is of variable size and consists of the following fields:

– V: The MAC PDU format version number field indicates which version of the SL-SCH subheader is used. In this version of the specification three format versions are defined, and this field shall therefore be set to "0001", "0010", and "0011". If the DST field is 24 bits this field shall be set to "0011". The V field size is 4 bits;

– SRC: The Source Layer-2 ID field carries the identity of the source. It is set to the ProSe UE ID. The SRC field size is 24 bits;

– DST: The DST field can be 16 bits or 24 bits. If it is 16 bits, it carries the 16 most significant bits of the Destination Layer-2 ID. If it is 24 bits, it is set to the Destination Layer-2 ID. For sidelink communication, the Destination Layer-2 ID is set to the ProSe Layer-2 Group ID or Prose UE ID. For V2X sidelink communication, the Destination Layer-2 ID is set to the identifier provided by upper layers as defined in TS 23.285 [14]. If the V field is set to "0001", this identifier is a groupcast identifier. If the V field is set to "0010", this identifier is a unicast identifier;

– LCID: The Logical Channel ID field uniquely identifies the logical channel instance within the scope of one Source Layer-2 ID and Destination Layer-2 ID pair of the corresponding MAC SDU or padding as described in table 6.2.4-1. There is one LCID field for each MAC SDU or padding included in the MAC PDU. In addition to that, one or two additional LCID fields are included in the MAC PDU, when single-byte or two-byte padding is required but cannot be achieved by padding at the end of the MAC PDU. The values of LCID from "01011" to "10100" identify the logical channels used to send duplicated RLC SDUs from logical channels of which the values of LCID from "00001" to "01010" respectively in sequential order. The LCID field size is 5 bits;

– L: The Length field indicates the length of the corresponding MAC SDU in bytes. There is one L field per MAC PDU subheader except for the last subheader. The size of the L field is indicated by the F field;

– F: The Format field indicates the size of the Length field as indicated in table 6.2.4-2. There is one F field per MAC PDU subheader except for the last subheader. The size of the F field is 1 bit. If the size of the MAC SDU is less than 128 bytes, the value of the F field is set to 0, otherwise it is set to 1;

– E: The Extension field is a flag indicating if more fields are present in the MAC header or not. The E field is set to "1" to indicate another set of at least R/R/E/LCID fields. The E field is set to "0" to indicate that either a MAC SDU or padding starts at the next byte;

– R: Reserved bit, set to "0".

The MAC header and subheaders are octet aligned.

Table 6.2.4-1 Values of LCID for SL-SCH

Index

LCID values

00000

Reserved

00001-01010

Identity of the logical channel

01011-10100

Identity of the logical channel which is used for duplication

10101-11011

Reserved

11100

PC5-S messages that are not protected

11101

PC5-S messages "Direct Security Mode Command" and "Direct Security Mode Complete"

11110

Other PC5-S messages that are protected

11111

Padding

Table 6.2.4-2 Values of F field:

Index

Size of Length field (in bits)

0

7

1

15