Thales · 10.7.1
NTN specific requirements and design for GNSS based operation ·
RAN1#124bis · Source verification
the AI's delta
new
vs RAN1#124
Thales appears as a new contributor with no prior meeting position. They present a design-philosophy requirement that NTN be addressed from the outset of 6G radio design to avoid the non-optimized adaptations from retrofitting NTN into 5G NR. They introduce a specific physical-layer proposal: a concatenated BCH outer code (t ≈ 8-10) with LDPC inner code (block size 16896 bits, 44 columns) to achieve Quasi-Error-Free performance and eliminate HARQ retransmissions in long-RTT NTN links where LDPC error floors are problematic at extended block sizes. They identify the current TR 38.811 K-factor parameterization as physically inconsistent across environment types and frequency bands, proposing it be revisited. Their scope requirements are the broadest of any contributor: all orbit types from VLEO (300 km) through GSO (35,786 km), earth-fixed steerable beams limited to 250 km maximum footprint diameter, all payload types through regenerative with functional BS split, and all duplex modes (FDD, HD-FDD, TDD) with GNSS-independent positioning and physical layer operation — placing them directly at odds with Nokia and Spreadtrum's FDD-only positions.
AI-synthesized from contributions · all text is paraphrased
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Contributions at RAN1#124bis · 1 doc
Considerations on 6G Radio for NTN
Position extracted by AI
Thales requires that NTN-related technical considerations be addressed from the outset of 6G radio design to avoid the non-optimized adaptations that occurred when NTN was retrofitted into 5G NR. They propose studying a concatenated BCH outer code with LDPC inner code (BCH t ≈ 8–10, LDPC block size 16896 bits / 44 columns) to achieve Quasi-Error-Free performance and eliminate HARQ retransmissions in long-RTT NTN links where LDPC error floors become problematic at extended block sizes. They identify the current TR 38.811 K-factor parameterization as physically inconsistent across environment types and frequency bands, and propose revisiting this modeling. They require support for all orbit types from Very LEO (300 km) through GSO (35,786 km) with earth-fixed steerable beams limited to 250 km maximum footprint diameter, all payload types from transparent through regenerative with functional BS split, and all duplex modes (FDD, HD-FDD, TDD) with GNSS-independent positioning and physical layer operation.
Summary
Thales presents 12 proposals and 5 observations in this 6G NTN contribution, urging that NTN-specific requirements be integrated from the outset of 6G radio design rather than retrofitted as in 5G. The document covers harmonized TN/NTN design principles, deployment scenarios across multiple orbits and frequency bands, a concatenated BCH+LDPC coding scheme to eliminate LDPC error floors without HARQ, and refinements to the NTN channel model K-factor parameterization.
Prior contributions
Thales has no prior contributions to 10.7.1 in the meetings currently tracked. This is either a new contributor to this sub-topic or the earliest meeting in our history.
How this was derived
The AI extracted the "position extracted" field above directly from each Tdoc during summarization.
For the delta summary at the top, the AI compared Thales's consolidated stance at RAN1#124bis
against their stance at RAN1#124 and classified the change as
new.
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