Overview

NR+ is designed to meet the rigorous demands of modern industrial and enterprise applications. It leverages proven techniques from cellular to deliver robust, reliable, and efficient communication for data and audio. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has approved NR+ as a the first and only non-cellular 5G technology for both Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication (URLLC) and massive Machine-Type Communication (mMTC). This allows anyone to build their own private 5G networks with a versatile radio stack can support low point to point, star and mesh network topologies.

The 5G triangle (IMT-2020)

NR+ is designed to support low latency, down to 1ms, between devices. This enable critical IoT and professional audio applications to utilize a standard, global, radio technology for the first time, in use cases previously realized by more custom and costly technologies only. NR+ also for the first time opens for wireless connectivity in applications that previously only was connected with wires.
NR+ is designed for large-scale deployments, and its affordability in terms of infrastructure, installation, and maintenance costs. Infrastructure connectivity costs are minimized by subscription-free radio and sharing the back-end connection costs between all devices. Installation is streamlined for zero-touch automatic network joining. Maintenance is minimized by self-organizing mesh networking. In parallel, enterprises benefit from the independence of a reliable private network operating in a license-exempt, dedicated spectrum. With its self-healing and self-organizing properties, networks avoid congestion issues and single points of failure.
This unique combination of features sets NR+ apart from other proprietary and standardized radio technologies, offering a future-proof solution that scales across various industrial needs.

Applications

NR+ can support audio, video, data and a combination of these, so it is inherently fit for a wide range of application use cases. The lead implementations focus on smart metering, building automation, professional audio, and industrial applications.

Technical Details

The physical layer employs Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing as the modulation scheme. It allows for operation with different channel bandwidths by using multiple numerologies with different subcarrier spacings. Hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) and advanced channel coding (Turbo coding) ensure ultra-reliable connections. Operation in a dedicated spectrum greatly lowers interference that increasingly hinders the congested ISM spectrums. The physical layer is suited for frequency bands below 6 GHz.
There are 24 time-divided slots for transmission and reception in a single radio frame.  Beacon periods can vary between 10ms up to 32 seconds.
In mesh operation there is no network wide synchronization. The nodes synchronize to the parent router node beacon. Over multiple hops, there is delay to the root node clock and beacon.  In a star network, if the parent node is synchronized to an external master clock, the child nodes achieve very good synchronization to that master clock.
Beacons offer the chance for low power optimized operation. With long beacon periods, the nodes can sleep long periods, only waking up for the beacon. The beacon informs the node if there is a message awaiting delivery to the node. ETSI standard release 2 improves this even further, allowing nodes to sleep over beacon periods. Device sleep possibilities are a compromise with the application latency needs allowing NR+ devices to achieve very low average power as for other non-latency focused radio standards.
The high transmission power enables long ranges. At the same time, the transmission power can be dynamically controlled to be down to –40 dBm, minimizing the power and radio interference when the peer device is close by. Thus, NR+ provides both long ranges, extended by the mesh technology, and dense networks.
NR+ applies some of the same design principles as classic DECT, like automatic interference management, which allows for deployments without extensive frequency planning. Features like transmission power control to minimize TX power use and the capability to detect and measure transmission from other systems. It is designed to enable coexistence with classic DECT, DECT Evolution, and other NR+ systems operating on the spectrum.
NR+ supports IPv6 networking, removing the need for complex and application-dependent edge gateways. IP connectivity can utilize standardized and state-of-the-art security, such as public key cryptography, and provides a secure way for device management and firmware updates. The image below shows an example of protocol architecture employing mesh topology and routing with IPv6 applications (left and right nodes) and non-IPv6 applications (middle). 

NR+ Protocol Architecture Example

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