and radio protocols by March 2020, with an ASN.1 freeze in June 2020. The work was slightly delayed from the original timing due to the efforts needed for Release 15 final- ization, and at the same time there was a desire to ensure early enough stability for the L1 parameters. This was an issue in Release 15 finalization and prevented from use of an earlier than December 2018 version for commercial implementations. The content of Release 16 can be grouped as follows: Efficiency enhancements: These are items that aim to improve the system perfor- mance by adding features to improve capacity and coverage or reduce latency and service interruptions. This covers items like MIMO enhancements, improving the 5G Technology: 3GPP New Radio, First Edition. Edited by Harri Holma, Antti Toskala, and Takehiro Nakamura. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 15 5G Phase 2 and Beyond Rel-15 NSA Rel-15 NSA (option-3) (option-3) freeze ASN.1 Rel-15 SA Rel-15 SA (option-2) (option-2) freeze ASN.1 Rel-15 late Rel-15 late drop freeze drop ASN. 1 Release 16 SI/WI phase Rel-16 Rel-16 content L1 freeze freeze Rel-16 ASN.1 Figure 15.1 Release 16 schedule. system capacity with multi-antenna operation or 2-step RACH, which reduces the delay from the random access operation. Addressing vertical industries beyond the mobile broadband use cases and address- ing segments like factory automation, power distribution, or the transportation industry: The work items to address these are IIoT, enhanced URLLC, and V2V and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications, with the term V2X also being used. V2V or device-to-device (D2D) communications has other expected use cases such as public safety, and SO on. A part of expanding the 5G use cases includes enabling 5G operation with unlicensed spectrum with NR-unlicensed (NR-U). Making network deployment and operability easier: This includes items like Mini- mization of Drive Test (MDT) and Self-Organizing Networks (SONs). The solutions looked at for 5G have already bee