3GPP

3rd Generation Partnership Project

Abbreviation	3GPP
Formation	1998;26 years ago (1998)
Type	Standards organization
Region served	Worldwide
Website	www.3gpp.org

The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is an umbrella term for a number of standards organizations which develop protocols for mobile telecommunications. Its best known work is the development and maintenance of: ^[1]

Contents

• Organizational Partners
• Market Representation Partners
• Standards
• Specification groups
• Standardization process
• See also
• References
• External links

• GSM and related 2G and 2.5G standards, including GPRS and EDGE
• UMTS and related 3G standards, including HSPA and HSPA+
• LTE and related 4G standards, including LTE Advanced and LTE Advanced Pro
• 5G NR and related 5G standards, including 5G-Advanced
• An evolved IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) developed in an access independent manner

3GPP is a consortium with seven national or regional telecommunication standards organizations as primary members ("organizational partners") and a variety of other organizations as associate members ("market representation partners"). The 3GPP organizes its work into three different streams: Radio Access Networks, Services and Systems Aspects, and Core Network and Terminals. ^[2]

The project was established in December 1998 with the goal of developing a specification for a 3G mobile phone system based on the 2G GSM system, within the scope of the International Telecommunication Union's International Mobile Telecommunications-2000, hence the name 3GPP. ^[3] It should not be confused with 3rd Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2), which developed a competing 3G system, CDMA2000. ^[4]

The 3GPP administrative support team (known as the "Mobile Competence Centre") is located at the European Telecommunications Standards Institute headquarters in the Sophia Antipolis technology park in France. ^[5]

Organizational Partners

The seven 3GPP Organizational Partners are from Asia, Europe and North America. Their aim is to determine the general policy and strategy of 3GPP and perform the following tasks:

• The approval and maintenance of the 3GPP scope;
• The maintenance of the Partnership Project Description;
• Take the decision to create or cease a Technical Specification Groups, and approve their scope and terms of reference;
• The approval of Organizational Partner funding requirements;
• The allocation of human and financial resources provided by the Organizational Partners to the Project Co-ordination Group;
• Act as a body of appeal on procedural matters referred to them.

Together with the Market Representation Partners (MRPs) perform the following tasks:

• The maintenance of the Partnership Project Agreement;
• The approval of applications for 3GPP partnership;
• Take the decision against a possible dissolution of 3GPP.

The Organizational Partners are: ^[6]

Market Representation Partners

The 3GPP Organizational Partners can invite a Market Representation Partner to take part in 3GPP, which:

• Has the ability to offer market advice to 3GPP and to bring into 3GPP a consensus view of market requirements (e.g., services, features and functionality) falling within the 3GPP scope;
• Does not have the capability and authority to define, publish and set standards within the 3GPP scope, nationally or regionally;
• Has committed itself to all or part of the 3GPP scope;
• Has signed the Partnership Project Agreement.

As of June 2021 ^[update] , the Market Representation Partners are: ^[6]

Standards

3GPP standards are structured as Releases. Discussion of 3GPP thus frequently refers to the functionality in one release or another.

Each release incorporates hundreds of individual Technical Specification and Technical Report documents, each of which may have been through many revisions. Current 3GPP standards incorporate the latest revision of the GSM standards.

The documents are made available without charge on 3GPP's web site. The Technical Specifications cover not only the radio part ("Air Interface") and Core Network, but also billing information and speech coding down to source code level. Cryptographic aspects (such as authentication, confidentiality) are also specified.

Specification groups

The 3GPP specification work is done in Technical Specification Groups (TSGs) and Working Groups (WGs). ^[23]

There are three Technical Specifications Groups, each of which consists of multiple WGs:

• RAN (Radio Access Network): RAN specifies the UTRAN and the E-UTRAN. It is composed of six working groups.

• SA (Service and System Aspects): SA specifies the service requirements and the overall architecture of the 3GPP system. It is also responsible for the coordination of the project. SA is composed of six working groups.

• CT (Core Network and Terminals): CT specifies the core network and terminal parts of 3GPP. It includes the core network – terminal layer 3 protocols. It is composed of five working groups.

• GERAN (GSM/EDGE Radio Access Network):

The closure of GERAN was announced in January 2016. ^[24] The specification work on legacy GSM/EDGE system was transferred to RAN WG, RAN6. RAN6 was closed in July 2020 (https://www.3gpp.org/news-events/2128-r6_geran).

The 3GPP structure also includes a Project Coordination Group, which is the highest decision-making body. Its missions include the management of overall timeframe and work progress.

Standardization process

3GPP standardization work is contribution-driven. Companies ("individual members") participate through their membership to a 3GPP Organizational Partner. As of December 2020, 3GPP is composed of 719 individual members. ^[25]

Specification work is done at WG and at TSG level: ^[26]

• the 3GPP WGs hold several meetings a year. They prepare and discuss change requests against 3GPP specifications. A change request accepted at WG level is called "agreed".
• the 3GPP TSGs hold plenary meetings quarterly. The TSGs can "approve" the change requests that were agreed at WG level. Some specifications are under the direct responsibility of TSGs and therefore, change requests can also be handled at TSG level. The approved change requests are subsequently incorporated in 3GPP specifications.

3GPP follows a three-stage methodology as defined in ITU-T Recommendation I.130: ^[27]

• stage 1 specifications define the service requirements from the user point of view.
• stage 2 specifications define an architecture to support the service requirements.
• stage 3 specifications define an implementation of the architecture by specifying protocols in details.

Test specifications are sometimes defined as stage 4, as they follow stage 3.

Specifications are grouped into releases. A release consists of a set of internally consistent set of features and specifications.

Timeframes are defined for each release by specifying freezing dates. Once a release is frozen, only essential corrections are allowed (i.e. addition and modifications of functions are forbidden). Freezing dates are defined for each stage.

The 3GPP specifications are transposed into deliverables by the Organizational Partners.

See also

• List of mobile phone generations
• Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS)
• 3GPP Long Term Evolution
• Evolution to 3G
• IP Multimedia Subsystem
• 3GP
• 3GPP2 – The 3GPP's counterpart in the CDMA2000 sphere.
• GSM services
• LoRaWAN
• Telecoms & Internet converged Services & Protocols for Advanced Networks (TISPAN)
• Open Mobile Alliance
• Service data adaptation protocol
• Service layer
• European Telecommunications Standards Institute

Related Research Articles

Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE), also known as 2.75G, Enhanced GPRS (EGPRS), IMT Single Carrier (IMT-SC), and Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution, is a 2G digital mobile phone technology for data transmission. It is a subset of General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) on the GSM network and improves upon it offering speeds close to 3G technology, hence the name 2.75G.

The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation (2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such as mobile phones and tablets. GSM is also a trade mark owned by the GSM Association. GSM may also refer to the Full Rate voice codec.

General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), also called 2.5G, is a mobile data standard on the 2G cellular communication network's global system for mobile communications (GSM). Networks and mobile devices with GPRS started to roll out around the year 2001. At the time of introduction it offered for the first time seamless mobile data transmission using packet data for an "always-on" connection, providing improved Internet access for web, email, WAP services, and Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS).

The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a 3G mobile cellular system for networks based on the GSM standard. Developed and maintained by the 3GPP, UMTS is a component of the International Telecommunication Union IMT-2000 standard set and compares with the CDMA2000 standard set for networks based on the competing cdmaOne technology. UMTS uses wideband code-division multiple access (W-CDMA) radio access technology to offer greater spectral efficiency and bandwidth to mobile network operators.

In the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) and 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE), user equipment (UE) is any device used directly by an end-user to communicate. It can be a hand-held telephone, a laptop computer equipped with a mobile broadband adapter, or any other device. It connects to the base station Node B/eNodeB as specified in the ETSI 125/136-series and 3GPP 25/36-series of specifications. It roughly corresponds to the mobile station (MS) in GSM systems.

The 3rd Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2) was a collaboration between telecommunications associations to make a globally applicable third generation (3G) mobile phone system specification within the scope of the ITU's IMT-2000 project. In practice, 3GPP2 was the standardization group for CDMA2000, the set of 3G standards based on the earlier cdmaOne 2G CDMA technology.

4G is the fourth generation of broadband cellular network technology, succeeding 3G and preceding 5G. A 4G system must provide capabilities defined by ITU in IMT Advanced. Potential and current applications include amended mobile web access, IP telephony, gaming services, high-definition mobile TV, video conferencing, and 3D television.

Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), sometimes referred to as "quick codes" or "feature codes", is a communications protocol used by GSM cellular telephones to communicate with the mobile network operator's computers. USSD can be used for WAP browsing, prepaid callback service, mobile-money services, location-based content services, menu-based information services, and as part of configuring the phone on the network. The service does not require a messaging app, and does not incur charges.

OMA SpecWorks, previously the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), is a standards organization which develops open, international technical standards for the mobile phone industry. It is a nonprofit Non-governmental organization (NGO), not a formal government-sponsored standards organization as is the International Telecommunication Union (ITU): a forum for industry stakeholders to agree on common specifications for products and services.

Adaptive Multi-Rate Wideband (AMR-WB) is a patented wideband speech audio coding standard developed based on Adaptive Multi-Rate encoding, using a similar methodology to algebraic code-excited linear prediction (ACELP). AMR-WB provides improved speech quality due to a wider speech bandwidth of 50–7000 Hz compared to narrowband speech coders which in general are optimized for POTS wireline quality of 300–3400 Hz. AMR-WB was developed by Nokia and VoiceAge and it was first specified by 3GPP.

Customized Applications for Mobile networks Enhanced Logic (CAMEL) is a set of standards designed to work on either a GSM core network or the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) network. The framework provides tools for operators to define additional features for standard GSM services/UMTS services. The CAMEL architecture is based on the Intelligent Network (IN) standards, and uses the CAP protocol. The protocols are codified in a series of ETSI Technical Specifications.

3GP is a multimedia container format defined by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) for 3G UMTS multimedia services. It is used on 5G phones.

Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Services (MBMS) is a point-to-multipoint interface specification for existing 3GPP cellular networks, which is designed to provide efficient delivery of broadcast and multicast services, both within a cell as well as within the core network. For broadcast transmission across multiple cells, it defines transmission via single-frequency network configurations. The specification is referred to as Evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Services (eMBMS) when transmissions are delivered through an LTE network. eMBMS is also known as LTE Broadcast.

High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) is an amalgamation of two mobile protocols—High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA)—that extends and improves the performance of existing 3G mobile telecommunication networks using the WCDMA protocols. A further-improved 3GPP standard called Evolved High Speed Packet Access was released late in 2008, with subsequent worldwide adoption beginning in 2010. The newer standard allows bit rates to reach as high as 337 Mbit/s in the downlink and 34 Mbit/s in the uplink; however, these speeds are rarely achieved in practice.

The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) is an independent, not-for-profit, standardization organization operating in the field of information and communications. ETSI supports the development and testing of global technical standards for ICT-enabled systems, applications and services.

LTE Advanced is a mobile communication standard and a major enhancement of the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard. It was formally submitted as a candidate 4G to ITU-T in late 2009 as meeting the requirements of the IMT-Advanced standard, and was standardized by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) in March 2011 as 3GPP Release 10.

In telecommunications, long-term evolution (LTE) is a standard for wireless broadband communication for mobile devices and data terminals, based on the GSM/EDGE and UMTS/HSPA standards. It improves on those standards' capacity and speed by using a different radio interface and core network improvements. LTE is the upgrade path for carriers with both GSM/UMTS networks and CDMA2000 networks. Because LTE frequencies and bands differ from country to country, only multi-band phones can use LTE in all countries where it is supported.

The Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) Alliance is a mobile telecommunications association of mobile operators, vendors, manufacturers and research institutes. It was founded by major mobile operators in 2006 as an open forum to evaluate candidate technologies to develop a common view of solutions for the next evolution of wireless networks. Its objective is to ensure the successful commercial launch of future mobile broadband networks through a roadmap for technology and friendly user trials. Its office is in Frankfurt, Germany.

ip.access Limited is a multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and markets small cells technologies and infrastructure equipment for GSM, GPRS, EDGE, 3G, 4G and 5G. The company was acquired by Mavenir in September 2020.

References

External links

• 3GPP website
• 3GPP Standards List of Acronyms & Terminology
• 3GPP freely published, detailed technical specifications
• 3GPP releases descriptions
• ETSI GSM UMTS 3GPP Numbering Cross Reference
• TS/TR
• specification numbering
• Tool for visualizing multiple inter-related 3gpp standards
• Tool for visualizing, decoding, encoding network protocol messages defined by 3gpp
• LTE-3GPP.info: online 3GPP messages decoder fully supporting Rel.15