System-Level Evaluation of 5G NR UE-Based Relays

Published

December 25, 2023

Author(s)

Samantha Gamboa Quintiliani, Aziza Ben Mosbah, Wesley Garey, Chunmei Liu, Richard A. Rouil

Abstract

The notion of UE-based relays started with the introduction of Proximity Services (ProSe) and Device-to-Device (D2D) communication, and evolved with the adaptation of the Fifth Generation (5G) New Radio (NR) interface. While the main goal of relays is to extend coverage, many parameters play a role in determining its effective range and benefits. In this paper, we study a military use case involving UE-to-Network (U2N) relays providing connectivity to a squad of soldiers with limited coverage. We configure advanced NR Sidelink (SL) functionalities that include diverse numerologies, sensing-based resource selection, and blind retransmissions. We evaluate the end-to-end network performance in terms of packet delivery ratio and latency. We show, through system-level simulations, that the choice of the different NR SL parameters is critical to achieve the expected performance in scenarios where the relay UE is serving variable number of UEs. We also discuss observed trade-offs and how they should be taken into consideration when establishing performance targets.

Conference Dates

October 30-November 3, 2023

Conference Location

Boston, MA, US

Conference Title

Military Communications Conference

Pub Type

Conferences

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1109/MILCOM58377.2023.10356291

Local Download

Keywords

Mobile Networks, Modeling and Simulation, Fifth Generation (5G), New Radio (NR), Sidelink (SL), Proximity Services (ProSe), UE-to-Network (U2N) relay

Citation

Gamboa Quintiliani, S. , Ben Mosbah, A. , Garey, W. , Liu, C. and Rouil, R. (2023), System-Level Evaluation of 5G NR UE-Based Relays, Military Communications Conference, Boston, MA, US, [online], https://doi.org/10.1109/MILCOM58377.2023.10356291, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=936926 (Accessed October 13, 2025)