What are 5G RedCap Applications?

5G Reduced Capability (RedCap), also known as 5G NR-Light, is a version of 5G designed for mid-tier use cases. It provides a balanced mix of throughput, battery life, complexity, and device density, making it cost-effective for various applications that don't require the high-performance features of regular 5G technology. The concept was introduced in 3GPP Release 17 for 5G NR.

So, where will 5G RedCap applications go? Let's look at the future development of industrial sensors, smart cities, and wearable devices.

• First, in accelerating industrial transformation and digitalization, industrial sensors play a crucial role in achieving higher flexibility, productivity, and efficiency, reducing maintenance requirements, and improving operational safety. RedCap technology is not only widely used in industrial automation and digitalization applications but also in environmental monitoring (such as monitoring critical infrastructure like buildings, bridges, dams, and natural disasters like wildfires, floods, tsunamis, and earthquakes).
• Next, in smart cities, this involves data collection and processing to monitor and manage urban resources more efficiently and provide services to the public. Surveillance cameras are an essential component of smart cities as well as factories and industries.
• Finally, we can also see consumers' growing interest in wearable devices such as smartwatches, electronic health devices, and medical monitoring equipment. These applications require different design considerations, and compared to eMBB devices, they have different requirements for device form, complexity, and energy efficiency.

 

The demand for industrial sensors, video surveillance, and wearable devices has prompted 3GPP to develop Rel-17 RedCap, and through the Rel-17 NR RedCap work item, a reduced-functionality NR device framework suitable for a variety of application scenarios has been established, including industrial sensors, video surveillance, and wearable devices, which require low complexity and sometimes low power consumption.

With the foundation laid in Rel-17, enhancements can now be made to improve support for these use cases and expand RedCap to new applications, such as smart grids and industrial wireless sensor networks. To further expand the market for RedCap use cases that need low cost, low energy consumption, and low data rates, e.g., industrial wireless sensor networks, additional complexity reduction enhancements should be considered.

Rel-18 RedCap aims to support low-tier devices between existing LPWA devices and the capabilities of Rel-17 RedCap devices, targeting a peak data rate of 10 Mbps. Rel-18 RedCap should not overlap with existing LPWA solutions. Enhancements should maintain the integrity of the RedCap ecosystem and maximize the benefits of economies of scale.

 

SGS Taiwan's wireless communication laboratory, in order to ensure the quality and performance of 5G RedCap products, took the lead in cooperating with instrument manufacturers to provide pre-testing services at the beginning of this year, and also obtained samples from chip manufacturers in advance for comparison and verification. We are also continuously committed to providing excellent technical support and testing services, including performance evaluation, interoperability testing, and security testing. This series of tests not only ensures compliance with various 5G RedCap technical standards but also verifies that SGS's testing laboratory has highly precise testing equipment and a professional technical team that can meet customers' high requirements for quality and reliability.

In addition to RF, RRM, D-mod, and Protocol, recent RedCap certification tests have included USIM and USAT, and future tests will cover RSE. If you want to know more about RedCap or certification requirements, please contact us:

📧  twwireless.MKT@sgs.com  ☎ (02) 2299-3279 # 1530 / 1522