5 Layer 1 related aspects

37.3403GPPMulti-connectivityNROverall descriptionRelease 17Stage 2TS

In MR-DC, two or more Component Carriers (CCs) may be aggregated over two cell groups. A UE may simultaneously receive or transmit on multiple CCs depending on its capabilities. The maximum number of configured CCs for a UE is 32 for DL and UL. Depending on UE’s capabilities, up to 31 CCs can be configured for an E-UTRA cell group when the NR cell group is configured. For the NR cell group, the maximum number of configured CCs for a UE is 16 for DL and 16 for UL.

A gNB may configure the same Physical Cell ID (PCI) to more than one NR cell it serves. To avoid PCI confusion for MR-DC, NR PCIs should be allocated in a way that an NR cell is uniquely identifiable by a PCell identifier. This PCell is in the coverage area of an NR cell included in the MR-DC operation. In addition, NR PCIs should only be re-used in NR cells on the same SSB frequency sufficiently distant from each other. X2-C/Xn-C signalling supports disambiguation of NR PCIs by including the CGI of the PCell in respective X2AP/XnAP messages (e.g. SGNB ADDITION REQUEST/S-NODE ADDITION REQUEST) and by providing neighbour cell relationship via non-UE associated signaling (e.g. via the Xn Setup procedure or the NG-RAN node Configuration Update procedure).

NR-DC supports the case of no synchronization between PCell and PSCell. However, some UEs may support NR-DC only if slot-level synchronization between PCell and PSCell is ensured.

In MR-DC, power sharing can be performed within a frequency range with either semi-static or dynamic power sharing. With semi-static power sharing, the maximum UE transmission power is semi-statically split between MCG and SCG by RRC configuration. With dynamic power sharing:

– when determining the UL transmission power of an SCG transmission in (NG)EN-DC or in NR-DC, the UE takes into account transmission(s) on MCG overlapping with any part of the SCG transmission;

– when determining the UL transmission power of an MCG transmission in NE-DC, the UE takes into account transmission(s) on SCG overlapping with any part of the MCG transmission.

Details are specified in TS38.213[21].

In EN-DC, a UE configured with uplink Tx switching can have Tx dynamically switched between E-UTRA uplink carrier and NR uplink carrier for enabling 2Tx UL transmission on NR carrier.