Internet DRAFT - draft-minaburo-lpwan-nbiot-hc

draft-minaburo-lpwan-nbiot-hc







lpwan Working Group                                          A. Minaburo
Internet-Draft                                                    Acklio
Intended status: Informational                                  E. Ramos
Expires: September 8, 2019                                      Ericsson
                                                       S. Shanmugalingam
                                                                  Acklio
                                                          March 07, 2019


       LPWAN Static Context Header Compression (SCHC) over NB-IoT
                    draft-minaburo-lpwan-nbiot-hc-02

Abstract

   The Static Context Header Compression (SCHC) specification describes
   a header compression and fragmentation functionalities for LPWAN (Low
   Power Wide Area Networks) technologies.  SCHC was designed to be
   adapted over any of the LPWAN technologies.

   This document describes the use of SCHC over the NB-IoT wireless
   access, and provides elements for an efficient parameterization.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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   This Internet-Draft will expire on September 8, 2019.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2019 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents



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   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Architecture  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   4.  Data Transmission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   5.  IP based Data Transmission  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     5.1.  SCHC over User Plane transmissions  . . . . . . . . . . .   8
       5.1.1.  SCHC Entities Placing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     5.2.  Data Over Control Plane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
       5.2.1.  SCHC Entities Placing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     5.3.  Parameters for Static Context Header Compression (SCHC) .  10
       5.3.1.  SCHC Context initialization . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
       5.3.2.  SCHC Rules  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
       5.3.3.  Rule ID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
       5.3.4.  SCHC MAX_PACKET_SIZE  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
       5.3.5.  Fragmentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
   6.  Non-IP based Data Transmission  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
     6.1.  SCHC Entities Placing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
     6.2.  Parameters for Static Context Header Compression  . . . .  14
       6.2.1.  SCHC Context initialization . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
       6.2.2.  SCHC Rules  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
       6.2.3.  Rule ID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
       6.2.4.  SCHC MAX_PACKET_SIZE  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
     6.3.  Fragmentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
       6.3.1.  Fragmentation modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
       6.3.2.  Fragmentation Parameters(TBD) . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   7.  Padding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   8.  Security considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
   9.  3GPP References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
   10. Appendix  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
     10.1.  NB-IoT User Plane protocol architecture  . . . . . . . .  16
       10.1.1.  Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP)  . . . . . .  16
       10.1.2.  Radio Link Protocol (RLC)  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  17
       10.1.3.  Medium Access Control (MAC)  . . . . . . . . . . . .  18
     10.2.  NB-IoT Data over NAS (DoNAS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  19
   11. Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  22
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  23







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1.  Introduction

   The Static Context Header Compression (SCHC)
   [I-D.ietf-lpwan-ipv6-static-context-hc] defines a header compression
   scheme and fragmentation functionality, both specially tailored for
   Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) networks defined in [RFC8376].

   Header compression is needed to efficiently bring Internet
   connectivity to the node within an NB-IoT network.  SCHC uses a
   static context to performs header compression with specific
   parameters that need to be adapted into the NB-IoT wireless access.
   This document assumes functionality for NB-IoT of 3GPP release 15
   otherwise other versions functionality is explicitly mentioned in the
   text.

   This document describes the use of SCHC and its parameterizing over
   the NB-IoT wireless access.

2.  Terminology

   This document will follow the terms defined in
   [I-D.ietf-lpwan-ipv6-static-context-hc], in [RFC8376], and the
   [TGPP23720].

   o  CIoT.  Cellular IoT

   o  C-SGN.  CIoT Serving Gateway Node

   o  UE.  User Equipment

   o  eNB.  Node B.  Base Station that controls the UE

   o  EPC.  Evolved Packet Connectivity.  Core network of 3GPP LTE
      systems.

   o  EUTRAN.  Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network.
      Radio network from LTE based systems.

   o  MME.  Mobility Management Entity.  Handle mobility of the UE

   o  NB-IoT.  Narrow Band IoT.  Referring to 3GPP LPWAN technology
      based in LTE architecture but with additional optimization for IoT
      and using a Narrow Band spectrum frequency.

   o  SGW.  Serving Gateway.  Routes and forwards the user data packets
      through the access network





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   o  HSS.  Home Subscriber Server.  It is a database that performs
      mobility management

   o  PGW.  Packet Data Node Gateway.  An interface between the internal
      with the external network

   o  PDU.  Protocol Data Unit.  Data packets including headers that are
      transmitted between entities through a protocol.

   o  SDU.  Service Data Unit.  Data packets (PDUs) from higher layers
      protocols used by lower layer protocols as a payload of their own
      PDUs that has not yet been encapsulated.

   o  IWK-SCEF.  InterWorking Service Capabilities Exposure Function.
      Used in roaming scenarios and serves for interconnection with the
      SCEF of the Home PLMN and is located in the Visited PLMN

   o  SCEF.  Service Capability Exposure Function.  EPC node for
      exposure of 3GPP network service capabilities to 3rd party
      applications.

3.  Architecture

      +--+
      |UE| \              +-----+     +------+
      +--+  \             | MME |-----| HSS  |
             \          / +-----+     +------+
      +--+    \+-----+ /      |
      |UE| ----| eNB |-       |
      +--+    /+-----+ \      |
             /          \ +------+
            /            \|      |  +------+   Service PDN
      +--+ /              | S-GW |--| P-GW |-- e.g. Internet
      |UE|                |      |  +------+
      +--+                +------+


                    Figure 1: 3GPP network architecture

   The architecture for 3GPP LTE network has been reused for NB-IoT with
   some optimizations and simplifications known as Cellular IoT (CIoT).
   Considering the typical use cases for CIoT devices here are described
   some of the additions to the LTE architecture specific for CIoT.
   C-SGN(CIoT Serving Gateway Node) is a deployment option co-locating
   EPS entities in the control plane and user plane paths (for example,
   MME + SGW + P-GW) and the external interfaces of the entities
   supported.  The C-SGN also supports at least some of the following
   CIoT EPS Optimizations:



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   o  Control Plane CIoT EPS Optimization for small data transmission.

   o  User Plane CIoT EPS Optimization for small data transmission.

   o  Necessary security procedures for efficient small data
      transmission.

   o  SMS without combined attach for NB-IoT only UEs.

   o  Paging optimizations for coverage enhancements.

   o  Support for non-IP data transmission via SGi tunneling and/or
      SCEF.

   o  Support for Attach without PDN (Packet Data Network) connectivity.

   Another node introduced in the CIOT architecture is the SCEF (Service
   Capability Exposure Function) that provide means to securely expose
   service and network capabilities to entities external to the network
   operator.  The northbound APIS are defined by OMA and OneM2M.  The
   main functions of a SCEF are:

   o  Non-IP Data Delivery (NIDD) established through the SCEF.

   o  Monitoring and exposure of event related to UE reachability, loss
      of connectivity, location reporting, roaming status, communication
      failure and change of IMEI-IMSI association.
























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                                             +-------+
                                             |  HSS  |
                                             +-+-----+
                                              /
                              +---------+  __/S6a
                 +--------+   | +-----+ +_/
   +----+ C-Uu   |        +---+-+ MME | | T6i+--------+ T7 +----+
   |CIOT+--------+  eNB   |S1 | |     +-+----+IWK-SCEF+----+SCEF|
   |UE  |        |(NB-IoT)|   | +---+-+ |    +--------+    +----+
   +----+        +--------+   |     |   |
                              |C-SGN|   |
                              |     |S11|
                   +------+   |     |   |
   +--------+LTE-Uu|      |   |  +--+-+ |
   |LTE eMTC|(eMTC)|eNB   +---+--+SGW | | S8+---+    +-----------+
   |   UE   +------+(eMTC)|S1 |  |    +-+---+PGW|SGi |Application|
   +--------+      +------+   |  +----+ |   |   +----+Server (AS)|
                              +---------+   +---+    +-----------+



            Figure 2: 3GPP optimized CIOT network architecture

4.  Data Transmission

   3GPP networks deal not only with data transmitted end-to-end but also
   with in-band signaling that is used between the nodes and functions
   to configure, control and monitor the system functions and behaviors.
   The control data is handled using a Control Plane which has a
   specific set of protocols, handling processes and entities.  In
   contrast, the end-to-end or user data utilize a User Plane with
   characteristics of its own separated from the Control Plane.  The
   handling and setup of the Control Plane and User Plane spans over the
   whole 3GPP network and it has particular implications in the radio
   network (i.e., EUTRAN) and in the packet core (ex., EPC).

   For the CIOT cases, additionally to transmissions of data over User
   Plane, 3GPP has specified optimizations for small data transmissions,
   allowing to transport user data (IP, Non-IP) within signaling on the
   access network (Data transmission over Control Plane or Data Over
   NAS).

   The maximum recommended MTU size is 1358 Bytes.  The radio network
   protocols limit the packet sizes to be transmitted over the air
   including radio protocol overhead to 1600 Octets.  But the value is
   reduced further to avoid fragmentation in the backbone of the network
   due to the payload encryption size (multiple of 16) and handling of
   the additional core transport overhead.



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   NB-IoT and in general the cellular technologies interfaces and
   functions are standardized by 3GPP.  Therefore the introduction of
   SCHC entities to UE, eNB and C-SGN does need to be specified in the
   NB-IoT standard.  This implies that standard specified SCHC support
   would not be backwards compatible.  A terminal or a network
   supporting a version of the standard without support of SCHC or
   without capability implementation (in case of not being standardized
   as mandatory capability) is not able to utilize the compression
   services with this approach.

   SCHC could be deployed differently depending on where the header
   compression and the fragmentation are applied.  The SCHC
   functionalities could be applied to the packets about to be
   transmitted over the air, or to the whole end-to-end link.  To
   accomplish the first, it is required to place SCHC compression and
   decompression entities in the eNB and in the UE for transmissions
   over the User Plane.  Additionally, to handle the case of the
   transmissions over Control Plane or Data Over NAS, the network SCHC
   entity has to be placed in the C-SGN as well.  For these two cases,
   the functions are to be standardized by 3GPP.

   Another possibility is to apply SCHC functionalities to the end-to-
   end connection or at least up to the operator network edge.  In that
   case, the SCHC entities would be placed in the application layer of
   the terminal in one end, and either in the application servers or in
   a broker function in the edge of the operator network in the other
   end.  For the radio network, the packets are transmitted as non-IP
   traffic, which can be currently served utilizing IP tunneling or SCEF
   services.  Since this option does not necessarily require 3GPP
   standardization, it is possible to also benefit legacy devices with
   SCHC by utilizing the non-IP transmission features of the operator
   network.

   Accordingly, there are four different scenarios where SCHC can be
   used in the NB-IoT architecture.  IP header compression on the data
   transmission over User Plane, IP header compression on the optimized
   transmissions over Control Plane (i.e.,DoNAS), non-IP transmissions
   of SCHC packets by IP tunneling, and non-IP transmissions of SCHC
   packets by SCEF forwarding.  The following sections describe each of
   them in more detail.  The first two scenarios refer to transmissions
   using the 3GPP IP transmission capabilities and the last two refers
   to transmission using the Non-IP capabilities.

5.  IP based Data Transmission







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5.1.  SCHC over User Plane transmissions

   Deploying SCHC only over the radio link would require to place it as
   part of the User Plane data transmission.  The User Plane utilizes
   the protocol stack of the Access Stratum (AS) for data transfer.  AS
   (Access Stratum) is the functional layer responsible for transporting
   data over wireless connection and managing radio resources.  The user
   plane AS has support for features such as reliability, segmentation
   and concatenation.  The transmissions of the AS make use of link
   adaptation, meaning that the transport format utilized for the
   transmissions are optimized according to the radio conditions, the
   number of bits to transmit and the power and interference constrains.
   That means that the number of bits transmitted over the air depends
   of the Modulation and Coding Schemes (MCS) selected.  The
   transmissions in the physical layer happens at network synchronized
   intervals of times called TTI (Transmission Time Interval).  The
   transmission of a Transport Block (TB) is completed during, at least,
   one TTI.  Each Transport Block has a different MCS and number of bits
   available to transmit.  The Transport Blocks characteristics are
   defined by the MAC technical specification [TGPP36321].  The Access
   Stratum for User Plane is comprised by Packet Data Convergence
   Protocol (PDCP) [TGPP36323], Radio Link Protocol (RLC)[TGPP36322],
   Medium Access Control protocol (MAC)[TGPP36321] and the Physical
   Layer [TGPP36201].  More details of this protocols are given in the
   Appendix.

5.1.1.  SCHC Entities Placing

   The current architecture provides support for header compression in
   PDCP utilizing RoHC [RFC5795].  Therefore SCHC entities can be
   deployed in similar fashion without need for major changes in the
   3GPP specifications.

   In this scenario, RLC takes care of the handling of fragmentation (if
   transparent mode is not configured) when packets exceeds the
   transport block size at the time of transmission.  Therefore SCHC
   fragmentation is not needed and should not be used to avoid
   additional protocol overhead.  It is not common to configure RLC in
   Transparent Mode for IP based user plane data.  But given the case in
   the future, SCHC fragmentation may be used.  In that case, a SCHC
   tile would match the minimum transport block size minus the PDCP and
   MAC headers.









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     +---------+                              +---------+  |
     |IP/non-IP+------------------------------+IP/non-IP+->+
     +---------+   |   +---------------+   |  +---------+  |
     | PDCP    +-------+ PDCP  | GTP|U +------+ GTP-U   |->+
     | (SCHC)  +       + (SCHC)|       +      +         |  |
     +---------+   |   +---------------+   |  +---------+  |
     | RLC     +-------+ RLC   |UDP/IP +------+ UDP/IP  +->+
     +---------+   |   +---------------+   |  +---------+  |
     | MAC     +-------+ MAC   | L2    +------+ L2      +->+
     +---------+   |   +---------------+   |  +---------+  |
     | PHY     +-------+ PHY   | PHY   +------+ PHY     +->+
     +---------+       +---------------+      +---------+  |
                  C-Uu/                    S1-U             SGi
        CIOT/     LTE+Uu     C-BS/eNB             C-SGN
       LTE eMTC
         UE


     Figure 3: SCHC entities placement in the 3GPP CIOT radio protocol
                   architecture for data over user plane

5.2.  Data Over Control Plane

   The Non-Access Stratum (NAS), conveys mainly control signaling
   between the UE and the cellular network [TGPP24301].  NAS is
   transported on top of the Access Stratum (AS) already mentioned in
   the previous section.

   NAS has been adapted to provide support for user plane data
   transmissions to reduce the overhead when transmitting infrequent
   small quantities of data.  This is known as Data over NAS (DoNAS) or
   Control Plane CIoT EPS optimization.  In DoNAS the UE makes use of
   the pre-established NAS security and piggyback uplink small data into
   the initial NAS uplink message, and uses an additional NAS message to
   receive downlink small data response.

   The data encryption from the network side is performed by the C-SGN
   in a NAS PDU.  Depending on the data type signaled indication (IP or
   non-IP data), the network allocates an IP address or just establish a
   direct forwarding path.  DoNAS (Data over NAS) is regulated under
   rate control upon previous agreement, meaning that a maximum number
   of bits per unit of time is agreed per device subscription beforehand
   and configured in the device.

   The use of DoNAS is typically expected when a terminal in a power
   saving state requires to do a short transmission and receive an
   acknowledgment or short feedback from the network.  Depending on the
   size of buffered data to transmit, the UE might be instructed to



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   deploy the connected mode transmissions instead, limiting and
   controlling the DoNAS transmissions to predefined thresholds and a
   good resource optimization balance for the terminal and the network.
   The support for mobility of DoNAS is present but produces additional
   overhead.  Additional details of DoNAS are given in the Appendix.

5.2.1.  SCHC Entities Placing

   In this scenario SCHC can be applied in the NAS protocol layer
   instead of PDCP.  The same principles than for user plane
   transmissions applies here as well.  The main difference is the
   physical placing of the SCHC entities in the network side as the
   C-SGN (placed in the core network) is the terminating node for NAS
   instead of the eNB.

   +--------+                       +--------+--------+  +  +--------+
   | IP/    +--+-----------------+--+  IP/   |   IP/  +-----+   IP/  |
   | Non-IP |  |                 |  | Non-IP | Non-IP |  |  | Non-IP |
   +--------+  |                 |  +-----------------+  |  +--------+
   | NAS    +-----------------------+   NAS  |GTP|C/U +-----+GTP|C/U |
   |(SCHC)  |  |                 |  | (SCHC) |        |  |  |        |
   +--------+  |  +-----------+  |  +-----------------+  |  +--------+
   | RRC    +-----+RRC  |S1|AP+-----+ S1|AP  |        |  |  |        |
   +--------+  |  +-----------+  |  +--------+  UDP   +-----+  UDP   |
   | PDCP*  +-----+PDCP*|SCTP +-----+ SCTP   |        |  |  |        |
   +--------+  |  +-----------+  |  +-----------------+  |  +--------+
   | RLC    +-----+ RLC | IP  +-----+ IP     | IP     +-----+ IP     |
   +--------+  |  +-----------+  |  +-----------------+  |  +--------+
   | MAC    +-----+ MAC | L2  +-----+ L2     | L2     +-----+ L2     |
   +--------+  |  +-----------+  |  +-----------------+  |  +--------+
   | PHY    +--+--+ PHY | PHY +--+--+ PHY    | PHY    +-----+ PHY    |
   +--------+     +-----+-----+     +--------+--------+  |  +--------+
              C-Uu/           S1-lite                   SGi
      CIOT/  LTE-Uu   C-BS/eNB            C-SGN                PGW
    LTE eMTC
      UE

       *PDCP is bypassed until AS security is activated [TGPP36300].


                                 Figure 4

5.3.  Parameters for Static Context Header Compression (SCHC)








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5.3.1.  SCHC Context initialization

   RRC (Radio Resource Control) protocol is the main tool used to
   configure the operation parameters of the AS transmissions for 3GPP
   technologies.  RoHC operation is configured with this protocol and it
   is to expect that SCHC will be configured and the static context
   distributed in similar fashion for these scenarios.

5.3.2.  SCHC Rules

   The number of rules in a context are defined by the network operator
   in these scenarios.  For this, the operator must be aware of the type
   of IP traffic that the device will carry out.  This means that the
   operator might provision sets of rules compatible with the use case
   of the device.  For devices acting as gateways of other devices
   several rules that match the diversity of devices and protocols used
   by the devices associated to the gateway.  Meanwhile than simpler
   devices (for example an electricity meter) may have a predetermined
   set of protocols and parameters fixed.  Additionally, the deployment
   of IPV4 addresses in addition to IPV6 may force to provision separate
   rules to deal with each of the cases.

5.3.3.  Rule ID

   For these transmission scenarios in NB-IoT, a reasonable assumption
   of 9 bytes of radio protocol overhead can be expected.  PDCP 5 bytes
   due to header and integrity protection, and 4 bytes of RLC and MAC.
   The minimum physical Transport Block (TB) that can withhold this
   overhead value according to 3GPP Release 15 specifications are: 88,
   104, 120 and 144 bits.  If it is wished to optimize the number of
   transmissions of a very small application packet so that in some
   cases can be transmitted using only one physical layer transmission,
   then the SCHC overhead should not exceed the available number of bits
   of the smallest utile physical TB available.  The packets handled by
   3GPP networks are byte-aligned, and therefore the minimum payload
   possible (including padding) is 8 bits.  Therefore in order to
   utilize the smallest TB the maximum SCHC is 8 bits.  This must
   include the Compression Residue in addition to the Rule ID.  In the
   other hand, it is possible that more complex NB-IoT devices (such as
   a capillarity gateway) might require additional bits to handle the
   variety and multiple parameters the of higher layer protocols
   deployed.  In that sense, the operator may want to have flexibility
   on the number and type of rules supported by each device
   independently, and consequently a configurable value is preferred for
   these scenarios.  The configuration may be set as part of the
   operation profile agreed together with the context distribution.  The
   Rule Id field size may range for example from 2 bits resulting in 4
   rules to a 8 bits value that would yield up to 256 rules which can be



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   used together with the operators and seems quite a reasonable maximum
   limit even for a device acting as a NAT.  More bits could be
   configured, but it should take in account the byte-alignment of the
   expected Compression Residue too.  In the minimum TB size case, 2
   bits size of Rule Id leave only 6 bits available for Compression
   Residue.

5.3.4.  SCHC MAX_PACKET_SIZE

   The Access Stratum can handle the fragmentation of SCHC packets if
   needed including reliability.  Hence the packet size is limited by
   the MTU possible to be handled by the AS radio protocols that
   corresponds to 1600 bytes for 3GPP Release 15.

5.3.5.  Fragmentation

   For these scenarios the SCHC fragmentation functions are recommend to
   be disabled.  The RLC layer of NB-IoT can segment packets in suitable
   units that fit the selected transport blocks for transmissions of the
   physical layer.  The selection of the blocks is done according to the
   input of the link adaptation function in the MAC layer and the
   quantity of data in the buffer.  The link adaptation layer may
   produce different results at each Time Transmission Interval (TTI)
   resulting in varying physical transport blocks that depends of the
   network load, interference and number of bits to be transmitted and
   QoS.  Even if setting a value that allows the construction of data
   units following SCHC tiles principle, the protocol overhead may be
   greater or equal than allowing the AS radio protocols to take care of
   the fragmentation natively.

5.3.5.1.  Fragmentation in Transparent Mode

   If RLC is configured to operate in Transparent Mode, there could be a
   case to activate a fragmentation function together with a light
   reliability function such as the ACK-Always mode.  In practice , it
   is very rare to transmit user plane data using this configuration and
   it is mainly targeting control plane transmissions.  In those cases
   the reliability is normally ensured by MAC based mechanisms, such as
   repetitions or automatic retransmissions, and additional reliability
   might only generate protocol overhead.

   In future operations, it could be devised the utilization of SCHC to
   reduce radio network protocols overhead and support the reliability
   of the transmissions, and targeting small data with the fewer
   possible transmissions.  This could be realized by using fixed or
   limited set of transport blocks compatible with the tiling SCHC
   fragmentation handling.




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6.  Non-IP based Data Transmission

   The Non-IP Data Delivery (NIDD) services of 3GPP enable the
   possibility of transmitting SCHC packets compressed by the
   application layer.  The packets can be delivered by means of IP-
   tunnels to the 3GPP network or using SCEF functions (i.e., API
   calls).  In both cases the packet IP is not understood by the 3GPP
   network since it is already compressed and the network does not has
   information of the context used for compression.  Therefore the
   network will treat the packet as a Non-IP traffic and deliver it to
   the UE without any other stack element, directly under the L2.

6.1.  SCHC Entities Placing

   In the two scenarios using NIDD, SCHC entities are located almost in
   top of the stack.  In the terminal, it may be implemented by a
   application utilizing the NB-IoT connectivity services.  In the
   network side, the SCHC entities are located in the Application Server
   (AS).  The IP tunneling scenario requires that the Application Server
   sends the compressed packet over an IP connection that is terminated
   by the 3GPP core network.  If instead the SCEF services are used,
   then it is possible to utilize a API call to transfer the SCHC
   packets between the core network and the AS, also an IP tunnel could
   be established by the AS, if negotiated with the SCEF.

   +---------+       XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX             +--------+
   | SCHC    |      XXX                    XXX            | SCHC   |
   |(Non-IP) +-----XX........................XX....+--*---+(Non-IP)|
   +---------+    XX                  +----+  XX   |  |   +--------+
   |         |    XX                  |SCEF+-------+  |   |        |
   |         |   XXX     3GPP RAN &   +----+  XXX     +---+  UDP   |
   |         |   XXX    CORE NETWORK          XXX     |   |        |
   |  L2     +---+XX                  +------------+  |   +--------+
   |         |     XX                 |IP TUNNELING+--+   |        |
   |         |      XXX               +------------+  +---+  IP    |
   +---------+       XXXX                 XXXX        |   +--------+
   | PHY     +------+ XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX         +---+  PHY   |
   +---------+                                            +--------+
      UE                                                       AS


   Figure 5: SCHC entities placed when using Non-IP Delivery (NIDD) 3GPP
                                  Sevices








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6.2.  Parameters for Static Context Header Compression

6.2.1.  SCHC Context initialization

   The static context is handled in the application layer level,
   consequently the contexts are required to be distributed according to
   the applications own capabilities, perhaps utilizing IP data
   transmissions up to context initialization.  Also the same IP
   tunneling or SCEF services used later for the SCHC packets transport
   may be used by the applications in both ends to deliver the static
   contexts to be used.

6.2.2.  SCHC Rules

   Even when the transmissions content are not visible for the 3GPP
   network, the same limitations than for IP based data transmissions
   applies in these scenarios in terms of aiming to use the minimum
   number of transmission and minimize the protocol overhead.

6.2.3.  Rule ID

   Similarly to the case of IP transmissions, the Rule ID size can be
   dynamically set prior the context delivery.  For example negotiated
   between the applications when choosing a profile according to the
   type of traffic and type of application deployed.  Same
   considerations related to the transport block size and performance
   mentioned for the IP type of traffic has to be follow when choosing a
   size value for the Rule ID field.

6.2.4.  SCHC MAX_PACKET_SIZE

   In these scenarios the maximum recommended MTU size that applies is
   1358 Bytes, since the SCHC packets (and fragments) are traversing the
   whole 3GPP network infrastructure (core and radio), and not only the
   radio as the IP transmissions case.

6.3.  Fragmentation

   In principle the fragmentation function should be activated for
   packets greater than 1358 Bytes.  Since the 3GPP reliability
   functions take great deal care of it, for simple point to point
   connections may be enough a NO-ACK mode.  Nevertheless additional
   considerations for more complex cases are mentioned in the next
   subsection to be taken in account.







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6.3.1.  Fragmentation modes

   Depending of the QoS that has been assigned to the packets, it is
   possible that packets are lost before they arrive to 3GPP radio
   network transmission, for example in between the links of a
   capillarity gateway, or due to buffer overflow handling in a backhaul
   connection.  In consequence, it is possible to secure additional
   reliability on the packets transmitted with a small trade-off on
   additional transmissions to signal the packets arrival indication
   end-to-end if no transport protocol takes care of retransmission.  To
   achieve this, the packets fragmentation is activated with the ACK-on-
   Error mode enabled.  In some cases, it is even desirable to keep
   track of all the SCHC packets delivered, in that case, the
   fragmentation function could be active for all packets transmitted by
   the applications (SCHC MAX_PACKET_SIZE == 1 Byte) and the ACK-on-
   Error mode.

6.3.2.  Fragmentation Parameters(TBD)

   o  Rule ID

   o  DTag

   o  FCN

   o  W (number of bits)

   o  WINDOW_SIZE

   o  Retransmission Timer

   o  Inactivity Timer

   o  MAX_ACK_Retries

   o  MAX_ATTEMPS

   o  MIC (size and algorithm)

7.  Padding

   NB-IoT and 3GPP wireless access, in general, assumes byte aligned
   payload.  Therefore the L2 word for NB-IoT MUST be considered 8 bits
   and the treatment of padding should use this value accordingly.







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8.  Security considerations

   3GPP access security is specified in (TGPP33203).

9.  3GPP References

   o  [TGPP23720] 3GPP, "TR 23.720 v13.0.0 - Study on architecture
      enhancements for Cellular Internet of Things", 2016.

   o  [TGPP33203] 3GPP, "TS 33.203 v13.1.0 - 3G security; Access
      security for IP-based services", 2016.

   o  [TGPP36321] 3GPP, "TS 36.321 v13.2.0 - Evolved Universal
      Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA); Medium Access Control (MAC)
      protocol specification", 2016

   o  [TGPP36323] 3GPP, "TS 36.323 v13.2.0 - Evolved Universal
      Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA); Packet Data Convergence
      Protocol (PDCP) specification", 2016.

   o  [TGPP36331] 3GPP, "TS 36.331 v13.2.0 - Evolved Universal
      Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA); Radio Resource Control (RRC);
      Protocol specification", 2016.

   o  [TGPP36300] 3GPP, "TS 36.300 v15.1.0 - Evolved Universal
      Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA) and Evolved Universal
      Terrestrial Radio Access Network (E-UTRAN); Overall description;
      Stage 2", 2018

   o  [TGPP24301] 3GPP "TS 24.301 v15.2.0 - Non-Access-Stratum (NAS)
      protocol for Evolved Packet System (EPS); Stage 3", 2018

10.  Appendix

10.1.  NB-IoT User Plane protocol architecture

10.1.1.  Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP)

   Each of the Radio Bearers (RB) are associated with one PDCP entity.
   And a PDCP entity is associated with one or two RLC entities
   depending of the unidirectional or bi-directional characteristics of
   the RB and RLC mode used.  A PDCP entity is associated either control
   plane or user plane which independent configuration and functions.
   The maximum supported size for NB-IoT of a PDCP SDU is 1600 octets.
   The main services and functions of the PDCP sublayer for NB-IoT for
   the user plane include:





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   o  Header compression and decompression by means of ROHC (Robust
      Header Compression)

   o  Transfer of user and control data to higher and lower layers

   o  Duplicate detection of lower layer SDUs when re-establishing
      connection (when RLC with Acknowledge Mode in use for User Plane
      only)

   o  Ciphering and deciphering

   o  Timer-based SDU discard in uplink

10.1.2.  Radio Link Protocol (RLC)

   RLC is a layer-2 protocol that operates between the UE and the base
   station (eNB).  It supports the packet delivery from higher layers to
   MAC creating packets that are transmitted over the air optimizing the
   Transport Block utilization.  RLC flow of data packets is
   unidirectional and it is composed of a transmitter located in the
   transmission device and a receiver located in the destination device.
   Therefore to configure bi-directional flows, two set of entities, one
   in each direction (downlink and uplink) must be configured and they
   are effectively peered to each other.  The peering allows the
   transmission of control packets (ex., status reports) between
   entities.  RLC can be configured for data transfer in one of the
   following modes:

   o  Transparent Mode (TM).  In this mode RLC do not segment or
      concatenate SDUs from higher layers and do not include any header
      to the payload.  When acting as a transmitter, RLC receives SDUs
      from upper layers and transmit directly to its flow RLC receiver
      via lower layers.  Similarly, an TM RLC receiver would only
      deliver without additional processing the packets to higher layers
      upon reception.

   o  Unacknowledged Mode (UM).  This mode provides support for
      segmentation and concatenation of payload.  The size of the RLC
      packet depends of the indication given at a particular
      transmission opportunity by the lower layer (MAC) and are octets
      aligned.  The packet delivery to the receiver do not include
      support for reliability and the lost of a segment from a packet
      means a whole packet loss.  Also in case of lower layer
      retransmissions there is no support for re-segmentation in case of
      change of the radio conditions triggering the selection of a
      smaller transport block.  Additionally it provides PDU duplication
      detection and discard, reordering of out of sequence and loss
      detection.



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   o  Acknowledged Mode (AM).  Additional to the same functions
      supported from UM, this mode also adds a moving windows based
      reliability service on top of the lower layer services.  It also
      provides support for re-segmentation and it requires bidirectional
      communication to exchange acknowledgment reports called RLC Status
      Report and trigger retransmissions is needed.  Protocol error
      detection is also supported by this mode.  The mode uses depends
      of the operator configuration for the type of data to be
      transmitted.  For example, data transmissions supporting mobility
      or requiring high reliability would be most likely configured
      using AM, meanwhile streaming and real time data would be map to a
      UM configuration.

10.1.3.  Medium Access Control (MAC)

   MAC provides a mapping between the higher layers abstraction called
   Logical Channels comprised by the previously described protocols to
   the Physical layer channels (transport channels).  Additionally, MAC
   may multiplex packets from different Logical Channels and prioritize
   what to fit into one Transport Block if there is data and space
   available to maximize the efficiency of data transmission.  MAC also
   provides error correction and reliability support by means of HARQ,
   transport format selection and scheduling information reporting from
   the terminal to the network.  MAC also adds the necessary padding and
   piggyback control elements when possible additional to the higher
   layers data.

























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                                               <Max. 1600 bytes>
                       +---+         +---+           +------+
   Application         |AP1|         |AP1|           |  AP2 |
   (IP/non-IP)         |PDU|         |PDU|           |  PDU |
                       +---+         +---+           +------+
                       |   |         |   |           |      |
   PDCP           +--------+    +--------+      +-----------+
                  |PDCP|AP1|    |PDCP|AP1|      |PDCP|  AP2 |
                  |Head|PDU|    |Head|PDU|      |Head|  PDU |
                  +--------+    +--------+      +--------+--\
                  |    |   |    |     |  |      |    |   |\  `----\
            +---------------------------+      |    |(1)| `-----\(2)'-\
   RLC      |RLC |PDCP|AP1|RLC |PDCP|AP1| +-------------+    +----|---+
            |Head|Head|PDU|Head|Head|PDU| |RLC |PDCP|AP2|    |RLC |AP2|
            +-------------|-------------+ |Head|Head|PDU|    |Head|PDU|
            |         |   |         |   | +---------|---+    +--------+
            |         |   | LCID1   |   | /         /   /   /         /
           /         /   /        _/  _//        _/  _/    / LCID2   /
           |        |   |        |   | /       _/  _/     /      ___/
           |        |   |        |   ||       |   |      /      /
       +------------------------------------------+ +-----------+---+
   MAC |MAC|RLC|PDCP|AP1|RLC|PDCP|AP1|RLC|PDCP|AP2| |MAC|RLC|AP2|Pad|
       |Hea|Hea|Hea |PDU|Hea|Hea |PDU|Hea|Hea |PDU| |Hea|Hea|PDU|din|
       |der|der|der |   |der|der |   |der|der |   | |der|der|   |g  |
       +------------------------------------------+ +-----------+---+
                         TB1                               TB2


       Figure 6: Example of User Plane packet encapsulation for two
                             transport blocks

10.2.  NB-IoT Data over NAS (DoNAS)

   The AS protocol stack used by DoNAS is somehow special.  Since the
   security associations are not established yet in the radio network,
   to reduce the protocol overhead, PDCP (Packet Data Convergence
   Protocol) is bypassed until AS security is activated.  RLC (Radio
   Link Control protocol) is configured by default in AM mode, but
   depending of the features supported by the network and the terminal
   it may be configured in other modes by the network operator.  For
   example, the transparent mode does not add any header or does not
   process the payload in any way reducing the overhead, but the MTU
   would be limited by the transport block used to transmit the data
   which is couple of thousand of bits maximum.  If UM (only Release 15
   compatible terminals) is used, the RLC mechanisms of reliability is
   disabled and only the reliability provided by the MAC layer by Hybrid
   Automatic Repeat reQuest (HARQ) is available.  In this case, the
   protocol overhead might be smaller than for the AM case because the



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   lack of status reporting but with the same support for segmentation
   up to 16000 Bytes.  NAS packet are encapsulated within a RRC (Radio
   Resource Control)[TGPP36331] message.

   Depending of the data type indication signaled (IP or non-IP data),
   the network allocates an IP address or just establish a direct
   forwarding path.  DoNAS is regulated under rate control upon previous
   agreement, meaning that a maximum number of bits per unit of time is
   agreed per device subscription beforehand and configured in the
   device.  The use of DoNAS is typically expected when a terminal in a
   power saving state requires to do a short transmission and receive an
   acknowledgment or short feedback from the network.  Depending of the
   size of buffered data to transmit, the UE might be instructed to
   deploy the connected mode transmissions instead, limiting and
   controlling the DoNAS transmissions to predefined thresholds and a
   good resource optimization balance for the terminal and the network.
   The support for mobility of DoNAS is present but produces additional
   overhead.

































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       +--------+   +--------+   +--------+
       |        |   |        |   |        |       +-----------------+
       |   UE   |   |  C-BS  |   |  C-SGN |       |Roaming Scenarios|
       +----|---+   +--------+   +--------+       |  +--------+     |
            |            |            |           |  |        |     |
        +----------------|------------|+          |  |  P-GW  |     |
        |        Attach                |          |  +--------+     |
        +------------------------------+          |       |         |
            |            |            |           |       |         |
     +------|------------|--------+   |           |       |         |
     |RRC Connection Establishment|   |           |       |         |
     |with NAS PDU transmission   |   |           |       |         |
     |& Ack Rsp                   |   |           |       |         |
     +----------------------------+   |           |       |         |
            |            |            |           |       |         |
            |            |Initial UE  |           |       |         |
            |            |message     |           |       |         |
            |            |----------->|           |       |         |
            |            |            |           |       |         |
            |            | +---------------------+|       |         |
            |            | |Checks Integrity     ||       |         |
            |            | |protection, decrypts ||       |         |
            |            | |data                 ||       |         |
            |            | +---------------------+|       |         |
            |            |            |       Small data packet     |
            |            |            |------------------------------->
            |            |            |       Small data packet     |
            |            |            |<-------------------------------
            |            | +----------|---------+ |       |         |
            |            | Integrity protection,| |       |         |
            |            | encrypts data        | |       |         |
            |            | +--------------------+ |       |         |
            |            |            |           |       |         |
            |            |Downlink NAS|           |       |         |
            |            |message     |           |       |         |
            |            |<-----------|           |       |         |
    +-----------------------+         |           |       |         |
    |Small Data Delivery,   |         |           |       |         |
    |RRC connection release |         |           |       |         |
    +-----------------------+         |           |       |         |
                                                  |                 |
                                                  |                 |
                                                  +-----------------+


   Figure 7: DoNAS transmission sequence from an Uplink initiated access





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                      +---+ +---+ +---+                  +----+
    Application       |AP1| |AP1| |AP2|                  |AP2 |
   (IP/non-IP)        |PDU| |PDU| |PDU|  ............... |PDU |
                      +---+ +---+ +---+                  +----+
                      |   |/   /  |    \                 |    |
   NAS /RRC      +--------+---|---+----+            +---------+
                 |NAS/|AP1|AP1|AP2|NAS/|            |NAS/|AP2 |
                 |RRC |PDU|PDU|PDU|RRC |            |RRC |PDU |
                 +--------+-|-+---+----+            +---------|
                 |          |\         |            |         |
                 |<--Max. 1600 bytes-->|__          |_        |
                 |          |  \__        \___        \_       \_
                 |          |     \           \         \__      \_
            +---------------|+-----|----------+            \       \
   RLC      |RLC | NAS/RRC  ||RLC  | NAS/RRC  |       +----|-------+
            |Head|  PDU(1/2)||Head | PDU (2/2)|       |RLC |NAS/RRC|
            +---------------++----------------+       |Head|PDU    |
            |    |          | \               |       +------------+
            |    |    LCID1 |  \              |       |           /
            |    |          |   \              \      |           |
            |    |          |    \              \     |           |
            |    |          |     \              \     \          |
       +----+----+----------++-----|----+---------++----+---------|---+
   MAC |MAC |RLC |    RLC   ||MAC  |RLC |  RLC    ||MAC |  RLC    |Pad|
       |Head|Head|  PAYLOAD ||Head |Head| PAYLOAD ||Head|  PDU    |   |
       +----+----+----------++-----+----+---------++----+---------+---+
                TB1                   TB2                     TB3


    Figure 8: Example of User Plane packet encapsulation for Data over
                                    NAS

11.  Informative References

   [I-D.ietf-lpwan-ipv6-static-context-hc]
              Minaburo, A., Toutain, L., Gomez, C., Barthel, D., and J.
              Zuniga, "LPWAN Static Context Header Compression (SCHC)
              and fragmentation for IPv6 and UDP", draft-ietf-lpwan-
              ipv6-static-context-hc-18 (work in progress), December
              2018.

   [RFC5795]  Sandlund, K., Pelletier, G., and L-E. Jonsson, "The RObust
              Header Compression (ROHC) Framework", RFC 5795,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC5795, March 2010,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5795>.






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   [RFC8376]  Farrell, S., Ed., "Low-Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN)
              Overview", RFC 8376, DOI 10.17487/RFC8376, May 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8376>.

Authors' Addresses

   Ana Minaburo
   Acklio
   2bis rue de la Chataigneraie
   35510 Cesson-Sevigne Cedex
   France

   Email: ana@ackl.io


   Edgar Ramos
   Ericsson
   Hirsalantie 11
   02420 Jorvas, Kirkkonummi
   Finland

   Email: edgar.ramos@ericsson.com


   Sivasothy Shanmugalingam
   Acklio
   2bis rue de la Chataigneraie
   35510 Cesson-Sevigne Cedex
   France

   Email: sothy@ackl.io




















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