5G Reduced Capability Devices: Analysis of Blocking Probability for Control Channels

The fifth-generation wireless technology is primarily designed to address a wide range of use cases mainly categorized into the enhanced mobile broadband, ultra-reliable and low-latency communication, and massive machine-type communication segments. To efficiently serve some other use cases whose requirements lie in-between these main use cases, the 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP), in Rel-17, introduce support for the reduced capability new radio (NR) devices known as RedCap with lower cost and complexity compared to legacy 5G devices. The considered complexity reduction techniques are associated with degraded link performance and coverage for the physical channels. Particularly, for the physical downlink control channel (PDCCH), which requires careful consideration, the reduction of the user equipments’ (UEs) complexity and the associated coverage loss can lead to an increase in the PDCCH blocking probability. This, in turn, can impact either the latency or the network capacity depending on the scenario. In this paper, we investigate the PDCCH blocking probability metric for RedCap devices. Specifically, we evaluate the performance of blocking probability in terms of various parameters including the number of users, size of downlink control information, size of control resource set, and the number of PDCCH candidates. Our results demonstrate that the PDCCH blocking probability increases by reducing the number of antenna branches, the number of PDCCH candidates, control resource set, and by increasing the number of scheduled UEs. We also show that the impact of reducing the DCI size is marginal on the PDCCH blocking probability. Finally, we discuss potential solutions and design guidelines for reducing the PDCCH blocking probability.