Introduction
RedCap is formerly known as NR-lite. The scope of this is to expand the NR-lite ecosystem which is used for Low Tier 5G UE’s which are industrial sensors/video monitoring, Relaxed IoT devices, wearables, etc. This could be used for healthcare, smart cities, transport and logistics, process logistics, electricity distribution, and building automation, etc. Enhanced Redcap has flexible bandwidth and Rel-17 leftovers. It supports high-end RedCap devices with flexible bandwidth larger than Rel-17 reduced BW (Bandwidth) larger than Rel-`17 reduced BW which is FR1: 20 MHz and FR2: 100 MHz. Rel-17 leftovers include layer 1 UE processing time relaxation. It has relaxed PDSCH/PUSCH processing time in terms of N1/N2 e.g doubled, it has relaxed UE CSI (Channel State Information) computation time and benefits in both the complexity reduction and power savings.
The potential solution for the directions in Rel-18 includes more service types: which support positioning in RedCap, More diversified interfaces: Sidelink RedCap, and More operation bands: unlicensed RedCap. NR REDCAP will start to appear in 5G networks and it will address the market demands of various smart IoT applications. Various devices connected to the NR-REDCAP channels could enjoy similar bandwidth as a standard 4G connection.
