19 Support for NR coverage enhancements

38.3003GPPNRNR and NG-RAN Overall descriptionRelease 17Stage 2TS

To improve NR uplink coverage for both FR1 and FR2, the following enhancements on PUSCH, PUCCH and MSG3 PUSCH are supported:

– Enhanced aggregation of multiple slots with TB repetition is supported for both PUSCH transmission with dynamic and configured grant. In addition, counting based on available slots is supported. The maximum number of aggregated slots for counting based on available slots and counting based on physical slots are both 32.

– TB processing over multiple slots with and without repetition is supported for both PUSCH transmission with dynamic grant and configured grant. For a single transmission of TB processing over multiple slots PUSCH, the TB size is determined based on multiple slots.

– DMRS bundling where the UE maintains phase continuity and power consistency across PUSCH transmissions or PUCCH repetitions to enable improved channel estimation is supported. Inter-slot frequency hopping with DMRS bundling is supported.

– Dynamic PUCCH repetition factor indication configured per PUCCH resource is introduced, applicable to all PUCCH formats.

– Aggregation of multiple slots with TB repetition for MSG3 transmission is supported on both NUL and SUL, applicable to CBRA with 4-step RA type. If configured, the UE requests MSG3 repetition via separate RACH resources when the RSRP of DL path-loss reference is lower than a configured threshold. BWP configured with RACH resources solely for MSG3 repetition is also supported without the need to consider the RSRP of DL path-loss reference by the UE.