3GPP RELEASE 20

Completing the 5G Advanced evolution and preparing for the next-generation wireless

6G RAN Plenary Study

Initially approved in December 2024, revised in March and June 2025

Investigate a candidate set of minimum technical performance requirements (TPRs) based on the Recommendation

ITU-R M.2160, as well as the associated target values and key assumptions for the identified minimum TPRs

Identify typical and practical deployment scenarios defined by attributes e.g., carrier frequency, inter-site distance,

user density, maximum mobility speed, and others

Develop 3GPP requirements for 6G Radio for improvement of existing and new services

Determine the applicability of legacy services to 6G Radio, and define radio requirements

Develop 3GPP requirements for 6G Radio for these practical deployment scenarios to ensure substantial gains in all

relevant bands (e.g., overall performance, user experience, TCO reduction) for:

• Ensure appropriate set of functionalities, minimize the

adoption of multiple options for the same functionality,

avoid excessive configurations, excessive device

capabilities and device capabilities reporting

• Energy efficiency and energy saving for network and device

• Enhanced spectral efficiency

• Enhanced overall coverage, focus on

cell-edge performance and uplink coverage

• Wider channel BW (at least 200MHz) support for

6G deployments at least > 2 GHz, around 7 GHz

• Re-use of existing 5G mid-band (~3.5GHz) site grid for

6G deployments in at least around 7 GHz and targeting

comparable coverage to 5G mid-band

• Target scalable and forward compatible design

for diverse device types

• Improved spectrum utilization and operations taking

into account diverse spectrum allocations

• Aim at using common 6G Radio design, which meets

mobile broadband service requirements as high priority,

to also meet vertical needs

• Aim at a harmonized 6G Radio design for TN and NTN,

including their integration

• System simplification, including reducing configuration

complexity, enabling more efficient Cell/device management,

etc.

Define a time plan & steer work as appropriate for the RAN WGs during the 6G WG SI to deliver high-level decisions for:

Core

Network

Cloud

Radio

Access

Network

Devices

• Fundamental 6G radio design aspects:

waveform, numerology, channel coding, etc.

• Overall high-level aspects of 5G to 6G migration

• RAN architecture and interfaces,

including RAN-Core interface

• Coordination of 6G AI/ML framework

3GPP-Release-20.pdf