Non-Public Networks and the 3GPP SA4 group
1st March 2021
5G-RECORDS is a project about media production for live events, one of its goals being using NPNs (Non-Public Networks) that can be tuned for performance (e.g. very low latency, highly robust services, business critical data privacy, etc).
The ongoing discussion within the 5G-RECORDS consortium has recently triggered a work item within the 3GPP SA4 group to study the exacting requirements.
The 3GPP SA4 group is focusing on multimedia system and delivery aspects, including defining content formats and delivery protocols for unicast, multicast and broadcast streaming, cloud and edge computing architectures, media APIs and end-to-end service performance.
This study item is supported by organizations involved in 5G-RECORDS, such as Ericsson LM, BBC, EBU and Sennheiser Electronic GmbH, as well as by other 3GPP members such as AT&T, B-Com, Dolby Laboratories Inc., Orange, Qualcomm Incorporated, Verizon UK Ltd and Tencent.
The primary objectives of the study are to identify standardization needs and potential gaps by:
- Developing one or more reference media production architectures and mapping media and control flows (e.g., video, return video, tally, telemetrics) used in media production onto the 5G NPN System.
- Profiling existing protocols or defining new ones if needed for media production over 5G NPN.
- Studying 5G System features like NPNs, Network Slicing, QoS classes or network event reporting and assistance, and their implication for media production.
- Designing media orchestration solutions that are responsible for the communication between the production devices, the 5G network and the existing production workflows.
- Studying different media plane protocols (such as Video Services Forum RIST).
All the objectives listed above are very relevant for the use-cases (live audio production, live immersive media production, wireless camera production studio) that 5G-RECORDS is considering.
