Status report 3GPP SA6 of Q4/2020

This report presents the 4Q 2020 status of 3GPP TSG SA Working Group 6 (SA6), the standardisation group that specifies Application Layer aspects of Mission Critical and other Vertical services (such as Railway, V2X, Factories of the Future, Unmanned Aerial Systems, etc.). About 3GPP SA6. 3GPP SA6 has started in 2015 as an off-shoot of the 3GPP SA2 working group (responsible for Stage 2 work on Core Network architectures and information flows). The initial focus of the group was on Mission Critical services which are considered an application layer on top of 3GPP networks. After completion of the most important Mission Critical specifications the group changed its focus to other application layer specifications including the development of generic APIs.
Most important developments:
The most important developments in 2020 are:
• Updating MC PTT (Mission Critical Push-To-Talk) from phase 2 to phase 3 work;
• Finalization of the study on the use of 5G multicast/broadcast for Mission Critical services;
• Finalization of the work on Isolated Operations (IOPS) for Mission Critical services;
• Finalization of the work on location enhancements for Mission Critical services;
• Continuation of the study on supporting Mission Critical services in 5G networks and the start of normative work;
• Start of a study on the use of Gateway UEs for Mission Critical communication;
• Finalization of the work on enhancements to the application layer architecture for railways and the start of a study on interconnection and migration aspects for railways;
• Finalization of the study on enhancements to the application layer architecture for V2X and the start of the normative work on this topic;
• Start of work on enhancements to the application layer architecture for verticals (SEAL – Service Enabler Application Layer);
• Finalization of the study on application layer architecture for Edge Applications and continuation of the normtavie;
• Continuation of the study on application layer architecture for Factories of the Future (FF);
• Continuation of the study on application layer architecture and Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and start of normative work on this topic;
• Continuation of the study on application layer architecture for MSGin5G (i.e. messaging for Massive Internet of Things in 5G networks) and start of normative work on this topic.
Status of work items. The following table provides an overview of recently finished, on-going, and recently started study items and work items with 3GPP information on intended 3GPP release, an indication of level of completeness, and related 3GPP documents. The completeness is given as of end of 2020.