Book contents
This book includes a reasonably complete description of the physical layer of 5G NR, covering frequency management, time management, space management, NR node and UE structure, RRC protocol, RRC parameters, radio issues, functional splits, physical layer processing, MIMO, beamforming, physical binary channels, initial access, and random access.
This book covers almost nothing about Sidelink , shared spectrum operation, and power control.
Acknowledgements
Utmost acknowledgments to my beloved family: my wife Marifeli, my daughter Maite, my son Jaime, my son in law Simone and my granddaughter Naiara. They have suffered my non-stop typing along endless evenings, nights, weekends and vacations. My son Jaime deserves particular credit for his very useful technical suggestions (he is, as I am, a telecommunications engineer) and also for his very useful writing suggestions.
Great recognition to all my team members from the NETCOM Laboratory at U. Carlos III, all of them Professor Doctors: Albert Banchs, Carlos Jesús Bernardos, Rubén Cuevas, Antonio de la Oliva, Alberto García-Martínez, Carmen Guerrero, Marco Gramaglia, Pablo Serrano, Francisco Valera and Iván Vidal. I consulted with them different specific NR aspects and they always provided me with excellent insight on complex technical issues.
Great recognition to my IMDEA Networks colleagues that research in radio communications. On the one hand, the Research professor Doctors Joerg Widmer, Domenico Giustiniano, Vincenzo Mancuso, Marco Ajmone-Marsan and Marco Fiore, who provided me with excellent insight on complex technical issues. On the other hand, Ignacio Berberana and Dr. Jesús O. Lacruz. Ignacio provided me with an invaluable insight on the insides of a mobile operator (he was top radio expert at Telefonica for 30 years), always within his confidentiality duty. Jesús provided me with invaluable insight on the insides of NR processing, as he did implement (under the direction of Joerg Widmer) the functional NR processing with an FPGA.
Great recognition to my good friends and colleagues Professor Doctors Ralf Steinmetz (TU Darmstadt), Ioannis Stavrakakis (NKUA), Jim Kurose (U. Massachusetts ad Amherst), Gustavo de Veciana (U. Texas at Austin), Edward Knightly (Rice University), Fernando Boavida (U. Coimbra), Gonzalo Camarillo (Ericsson) and Heinrich Stüttgen (NEC Eurolabs). They greatly inspired me, and I had the privilege of standing on their shoulders of giants.
High recognition to several colleagues in the 5TONIC 5G co-creation laboratory. From Telefónica, Dr. Luis Contreras, Jesús Folgueira, Javier Gavilán (currently at Mavenir) and Dr. Diego López. From INTERDIGITAL, Dr. Alain Mourad. From Ericsson, Manuel Lorenzo, Marc Molla and Iván Rejón. From Andrew, an Amphenol company (formerly CommScope), Pedro Torres-Martos. They provided me with invaluable insight on deep technical issues of 5G NR, as well as practical issues, always within their confidentiality duty.
High recognition to several colleagues from the Ministry of Economy and Digitization. My boss, the Vice minister Roberto Sánchez. My chief of cabinet, Juan Santaella. My deputy directors, Pedro Alonso (operators), Javier Amorós (supervision), Lorenzo Avello (regulation), Antonio Fernández-Paniagua (spectrum decisions), Cristina Morales (mmedia and internet services), Marta Serrano (spectrum control). My division directors María Lara (budget) and José María Moragón (evaluation). They provided me with invaluable insight on regulatory and business aspects of 5G, always within their confidentiality duty.
Patronage recognition to the European Commission: their support to European research and development of top excellence and relevance, through the coordination of industry and academia, brings a spark of hope that Europe will be able to remain competitive in respect to the USA and China. Mario Campolargo, Peter Stuckmann, Bernard Barani, Remy Bayou, Philippe Lefebvre, Pavlos Fournogerakis, Thibaut Kleiner and Francisco Guirao (plus many others) all deserve huge recognition.
Patronage recognition to my employers, University Carlos III of Madrid (UC3M) and the Regional Government of Madrid: they directly funded my work for many years, which has allowed me to offer this book for free to the academic, scientific and industry communities. Within the Regional Government, particular acknowledgement to Lucía Figar, Rocío Albert, Ana Isabel Cremades and María Luisa Castaño for their extraordinary support to the IMDEA initiative.
My thanks and acknowledgement to all the public sources of information and non-copyrighted figures. Some figures and text fragments of this book have been obtained, after correcting and/or adapting them, from the TS documents, different referenced non-copyrighted web sites, from Wikipedia and from other public sources.
About the author
Prof. Dr. Arturo Azcorra graduated from Loy Norrix High School (Michigan, USA) in 1980. In 1986, he received his M.Sc. degree in Telecommunications Engineering from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Madrid, Spain), with "Sobresaliente" (Outstanding) grade, and was subsequently awarded the Price Waterhouse Prize for Best Student in 1986. He then obtained his Ph.D. in Telecommunications Engineering from the same university in 1989, receiving the National Award COIT-AEIT-ANIEL (AMETIC) to the Best PhD Thesis (Premio Nacional a la Mejor Tesis Doctoral). In 1993, he obtained an MBA from the Instituto de Empresa, graduating first in his class.
He began his career in the Madrid Subway Company (Compañía del Metropolitano de Madrid), while simultaneously performing research work in telecommunications at UPM. He was an associate professor at UPM from 1989 to 1998, when he moved to University Carlos III of Madrid (UC3M) where he became Full Professor[1] and founder of the NETCOM Research Group on Networks and Communication Technologies, which he has coordinated since, at the Department of Telematics Engineering. He was later appointed Deputy Vice-Provost for Academic Infrastructures at the UC3M and held this post from 2000 to 2007. He was a Visiting Researcher at ICSI University of California at Berkeley (USA) in 1999 and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (USA) in 2002. In 1998 he was appointed Director of the UC3M Telefónica Chair and worked in this role until 2009. In June 2002 he earned the distinction of being named IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Senior Member. From 2003 to 2008 he was Director of REDIMadrid,[2] the Telematics Research Network of the Community of Madrid. He is the founder and director since 2006 (except for occasional periods in which he has held other public positions) up to 2024 of the international research institute IMDEA Networks.
In November 2009 he was appointed Director General for Technology Transfer and Corporate Development at the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN)[3][4][5], a position he held until his appointment as Director General at the Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnológico Industrial - CDTI), the Spanish agency to fund research in private companies, on May 30, 2010.[6][7][8] In February 2012 he returned to his post as full professor at the Department of Telematics Engineering at University Carlos III of Madrid and Director of IMDEA Networks Institute.[9][10] In April 2021, he took leave from these posts, and incorporated to the Spanish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation as Director General of Telecommunications and Organization of Audiovisual Media Services[11] On October 6, 2022, he was promoted to Undersecretary of Telecommunications and Organization of Audiovisual Media Services. In July 2023, he regained his position as full professor in the Department of Telematics Engineering at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and director of IMDEA Networks. On December 2024 he voluntarily stepped down from the direction of IMDEA Networks.
In October 2018 he was appointed member of the European Academy of Sciences "Academia Europaea". He received, in 2020, the prestigious Reginald Fessenden Award[12] for his contributions to the development of 5G technology. Granted by the ACM-MSWIM International Conference, the award ("for his pioneering contribution to the midhaul and core of 5G networks") recognizes scientific contributions in the fields of wireless communications, networking and mobile systems.
In November 2021 he was elevated to the rank of IEEE Fellow in the “Technical Leader” category, for the scientific and industrial impact of his research contributions to the development of 5G technology. In this way, he becomes the first scientist in Spain to be designated IEEE Fellow in the “Technical Leader” category.
He has participated in or directed 63 advanced research projects, mainly in the Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development of the European Union. He was the coordinator of the European Networks of Excellence E-NET, E-NEXT and CONTENT, and of the European projects CARMEN, TRILOGY, 5G-CROSSHAUL and 5G-TRANSFORMER. He has licensed technological developments in telecommunications for Ericsson-Telebit Denmark, NEC Europe and Huawei China. He has also performed advisory and technological consulting work for organizations such as Servicom, the European Space Agency, MFS-Worldcom, the Community of Madrid, RENFE, REPSOL, the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports (Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte), Ericsson-Telebit and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology. He was a Member of the Advisory Board of the Future Internet PPP, European Commission, since February 2012 until December 2017. He was a member of General Assembly of the 5G Infrastructure Association from 2013 to 2021.[13] From 2013 to 2017 he was also a member of the Steering Board of the NetWorld2020 European Technology Platform (ETP) (formerly Net!Works & ISI ETPs), during which he was also the Chairman of its Expert Advisory Group.[14] Since 2014 he is partnership Board member of the European Union 5G-PPP,[15] and from 2015 to 2021 he was Vice-president of the 5TONIC Laboratory.[16] Arturo Azcorra is the founder of the ACM CoNEXT conference series, of which he was the first General Chair. He was a member of the Standing Committee of the IEEE INFOCOM Conference from 2005 to 2014, and has chaired prestigious international conferences such as IEEE INFOCOM, ACM CoNEXT and PROMS-IDMS. He has authored over one hundred and sixty technical publications in journals and international and national conferences.
Book principles
These are a few principles on writing technical books that I consider relevant and that have guided me while writing this book:
Electronic is in, paper is out!
Reading technical books in electronic format is full of advantages. Aside from the obvious environmental advantage of using less paper, in electronic format you can:
- Follow the cross-links that populate the book.
- Navigate with clickable, foldable table of contents (pdf bookmarks)
- Do an electronic search for a term or sentence.
- Write comments and notes, even substantially long, in a clean way and directly over the document. You can also later edit or remove these comments.
Science please, not literature!
Write with short clear sentences: subject, verb, predicate. Avoid long sentences with subordinate clauses, which usually cause confusion.
Avoid pronouns as much as possible. A few repetitions of the same object name in a paragraph might be bad in a novel, but in a technical book it is very likely good for the reader to better recall the object name.
Never mix pronouns referring to different nouns. In case you are referring many times to the same object in the same context: use only one pronoun when referring to the same name several times in the same context.
Right to the point!
Begin every section with a short explanation/definition of the section’s topic, even if not completely accurate, and if possible, in one sentence.
Next, indicate the main characteristics/attributes of the section’s topic.
Never start a section with preambles, justifications or contextualization: these longer and more detailed explanations should come later in the section.
Say something once, why say it again!
Avoid duplicate explanations: this is a source of incoherences. When explaining a concept, if you need a subordinate explanation of another concept, do not copy the explanation and rather insert a link to the place where the corresponding concept is properly explained. If absolutely necessary, you may insert a short summary of the explanation, in addition to the link.
Holistic is beautiful!
In spite of the previous principle, sections summarizing cross-concept issues are absolutely essential. When you explain concepts one by one, there is a high risk of missing the (sub)system view. It is therefore essential to have one section for each (sub)system, where the whole is explained and it is also essential to use links (see the next principle) to the places where the corresponding individual elements of the (sub)system are explained.
Links! links! links!
The explanation of most concepts requires the usage of different terms referring to other concepts. Each such term should have a link to the place where it is explained. Links are extremely important in a technical book! This is one of the reasons why it is much better to have a technical book in electronic form than on paper.
One and only one terminology!
Define properly, and coherently use, a single terminology throughout the book. When the field itself does not have a single globally accepted terminology (which is quite frequent), in the definition of each term that you do in the book, include a mapping to the different related terms usually accepted in the field.
An image is worth a thousand words!
Images are great to clarify concepts and help the reader recall complex questions. Use images as much as possible. Design them very carefully because an image is equally powerful to clarify a concept as to misguide about it.
An image alone is not enough!
Precisely because an image is worth a thousand words, on most cases, images are not self-explanatory. Images must therefore be followed by text that explains their meaning and implications. This allows the reader to get the full understanding of the image, and, to avoid possible misunderstandings over its meaning.
The matrix!
Describe technical systems with a bidimensional matrix, that has both a structural dimension and a conceptual dimension. If a system is only described in 1 of these dimensions, the reader has an incomplete view. Structure the book contents on sections following 1 dimension, and add sections written on the other dimension, where these later sections have links to each of the corresponding former sections.
Logic is logical! (but not obvious)
Natural language does not adapt well to express statements from mathematical logic. It is therefore essential to make sure that the usage of “each”, “every”, “any”, “each and every”, “all”, “both”, “each of both”, “and”, “or”, “and/or”, “if”, “if and only if”, “may” (which is the equivalent to “may not”), “might”, “can”, “cannot” and similar statements is the correct one. Use parentheses to group logical items and subexpression in every sentence that expresses a complex logical statement.
It’s a colorful world!
Using colors to quickly identify an object both in text and figures is extremely useful to facilitate that the reader follows an explanation. Color is always useful, but it is particularly useful to identify terms in equations, object types in programming code (e.g., ASN.1 code) and object types in figures.
What the hell is “XUR-TT”!
Whenever a given acronym is used in a section, write it expanded the first time that it is used, to save the reader the need to recall what it is. In successive usages within the section, you may use the acronym as such. Notice that in our technical field there are LOTS of acronyms.
Clickable, foldable, table of contents!
Technical books are (usually) consulted going to a specific chapter, section or subsection. Even when they are read linearly (like a novel), they are read linearly once and afterwards consulted many times. Having a clickable, foldable, table of contents, such as the one allowed for by pdf readers is a must. This is one of the reasons why it is much better to have a technical book in electronic form than on paper.
Conventional table of contents!
A clickable, foldable, table of contents (see the previous point) is a must, but it is also a must to have an actual table of contents in the book because the clickable/foldable one cannot be searched. I consider it better to insert it at the end of the book, to avoid beginning the book with a long table of contents, but other authors prefer to insert it at the beginning.
Copyright
This book is copyrighted.
This book is free of charge for training, educational purposes, and research.
Other sources of information
- 3GPP Technical Specifications (standards). Downloadable from:
www.3gpp.org/ftp/Specs/archive/
- ETSI standards of 3GPP documents:
https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/125200_125299/125212/
- Individual UE model information:
www.globalcertificationforum.org/
- Overview of 5G characteristics, by release:
5G Release 15, Qualcomm, December 2022
https://www.qualcomm.com/content/dam/qcomm-martech/dm-assets/documents/5G-NR-Release-15.pdf
5G Release 16, Qualcomm, July 2020
5G Release 17, Qualcomm, March 2022
- Mobile communications technical explanations
http://howltestuffworks.blogspot.com/
https://devopedia.org/5g-new-radio
https://sharetechnote.com/html/5G/Handbook_5G_Index.html
https://sharetechnote.com/html/6G/6G_WhatIsIt.html
https://www.5gfundamental.com/
https://www.rfwireless-world.com/5G/
https://www.electronics-notes.com/articles/connectivity/
- Excellent document on antennas:
“Recommendations for base station antennas”, NGMN, v13.0, July 2025. Downloadable from:
- Mobile communications tools and technical explanations
- 3GPP Glossary
3GPP TR 21.905: "Vocabulary for 3GPP Specifications".
- KPIs: Euro-5G - Supporting the European 5G Initiative (D2.6 Final report on programme progress and KPIs), Version: v0.2.
- 5G New Radio Commercial Deployments
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_5G_NR_networks
- Detailed information on actually deployed base stations
https://www.cellmapper.net/map
- “5G NR: The Next Generation Wireless Access Technology”, second edition, Erik Dahlman, Stefan Parkvall, Johan Sköld, Elsevier Academic Press, 2021.
- “Understanding the 5G NR Physical Layer”, Javier Campos, Keysight Technologies.
- “Physical Cell ID Allocation in Cellular Networks”, Sofia Nyberg, Master thesis, Department of Computer Science, Linköping University, 2016.
- “C-RAN Employing xRAN Functional Split: Complexity Analysis for 5G NR Remote Radio Unit”, Jay Kant Chaudhary, Atul Kumar, Jens Bartelt and Gerhard Fettweis, TU Dresden, Germany. May 2019.
- “Configured Grant for Ultra-Reliable and Low-Latency Communications: Standardization and Beyond”, by M. Gerami and B. Singh, IEEE Communications Standards, Volume 6 , Issue, 4, December 2022.
- Glossary of Technical terms: