According to R1-1700771, QCL is defined as follows :

Two antenna ports are said to be quasi co-located if properties of the channel over which a symbol on one antenna port is conveyed can be inferred from the channel over which a symbol on the other antenna port is conveyed

Don't get disappointed if this does not sound clear to you. It is same to me as well. I may not understand the detailed physics and mathematics behind this forever, but I think I need to know at least some high level parameters about this.

It will take long time to get real / practical meaning of this statement. If you are familiar with the definition of Antenna port in LTE, you would noticed that the definition shown here is very similar to Antenna Port in LTE except a couple of words.

Simply put you may think that Antenna port defines the correlation between symbols within a same antenna port and QCL defines the correlation between symbols from different antenna ports.

• QCL Types
• What does it really mean ?
• Triggering TCI
• Mapping between QCL-Type configurations and TCI-RS-Set / DMRS
• How UE figure out TCI-State for PDCCH for each specific moment ?
•   How UE figure out TCI-State for downlink data PDSCH  for each specific moment ?
• Case 1 : When tci-PresentInDCI = omit or PDSCH is scheduled by DCI 1_0.
• Case 2 : When tci-PresentInDCI = enabled.
• Examples of TCI configuration in RRC
• Example 1 > PDCCH QCLed with SSB
• Example 2 > PDCCH QCLed with CSI-RS
• Example 3 > PDCCH QCLed with SSB and CSI-RS
• Example 4 > CSI-RS beam QCLed with SSB beam
• RRC Messages on QCI
• Get the Test Procedure and Log / Amarisoft TechAcademy

QCL Types

"38.214 - 5.1.5   Antenna ports quasi co-location" defines four difference types of QCL as listed below.

What does it really mean ?

I wrote about the formal definition of QCL and the types of QCL. What does it really mean ? When somebody says 'A signal (A) is QCLed (Quasi Colacated) with another signal (B)', do you really understand what this mean ?

I would say in my own words as follows.

i) The two signal (A) and (B) has gone through very similar channel condition.

ii) In order for (A) and (B) to go through the similar channel, it is highly likely that they are from the same location(i.e, same place and same antenna). ==> More specifically, it implies that the signal (A) and (B) are transmitted from the same TRP(Antenna Array) that applies the same Spatial Filter.

iii) Since the two signal reaches the reciever through similar channel, if the reciever can detect one of the signal (e.g, Signal A) and figure out the channel properties of the signal, it will greatly help to detect the other signal (e.g, Signal B).

Let me give you more concrete example using NR terminology. What would it mean if I say 'the PDCCH from a gNB is QCLed with SSB'. What would this mean ?

I would mean that the PDCCH went through the similar channel condition as SSB. The channel information estimated to detect SSB can help detect PDCCH as well.

Now let's get into just a little bit deeper. When you say 'channel condition', what does it exactly mean ? There can be a lot of factors that defines the channel condition, but current 3GPP defines several parameters to define the channel condition as listed below.

• Doppler Shift
• Doppler Spread
• Average Delay
• Delay Spread
• Spatial Rx Parameter

One or more of these factors would form a property of the channel that two signal shares and the predefined group of these factors are labeled as QCL type that is mentioned in previous section.

Putting all these togother, we can define the relationship of two related signal like ... 'The PDCCH signal from the gNB is QCLed with SSB via Type C'. This mean that the PDCCH and the SSB went through the similar radio channel sharing the similar properties in terms of Average Delay and Doppler Shift.

Triggering TCI

I wrote this table based on the descriptions in "38.214 - 5.1.5   Antenna ports quasi co-location"

Mapping between QCL-Type configurations and TCI-RS-Set / DMRS

Which QCL-Type is applied is determined by TCI-RS-Set and DMRS. "38.214 - 5.1.5   Antenna ports quasi co-location" states about the mapping between QCL-Type and TCI-RS-Set as follows. The statement in this specification is not so clear (actually confusing) to me. I am not 100% confident on whether I interpreted correctly or not. Feel free to let me know if you have any different interpretation.

< QCL for CSI Resource >

< QCL for CSI DMRS >

How UE figure out TCI-State for PDCCH for each specific moment ?

The overall process of applying TCI for this case is as follows.

Step 1 :  A TCI State table called 'tci-StatesToAddModList' is defined in PDSCH-Config. The max size of the table is 128.

Step 2 : Select a subset of the tables from tci-StatesToAddModList and put them into ControlResourceSet.tci-StatesPDCCH-ToAddList. The max size of this table is 64.

Step 3 : Apply a specific tci-States defined in Step 2 via TCI State Indication for UE-specific PDCCH MAC CE.

How UE figure out TCI-State for downlink data PDSCH  for each specific moment ?

There are roughly two cases we can think of configuring TCI-State on UE side. This process is described in very complicated way (at least to me) in 38.214 and it was hard for me to get some big picture. Followings are what I interpret the specification.

Case 1 : When tci-PresentInDCI = omit or PDSCH is scheduled by DCI 1_0.

In this case, UE used TCI state for CORESET/PDCCH as the TCI state for PDSCH. it means

TCI state for PDSCH = TCI state for CORESET/PDCCH

Case 2 : When tci-PresentInDCI = enabled.

In this case, UE used TCI specified in DCI 1_1. Sound simple ?  It may look simple, but the problem is that TCI field in DCI 1_1 is just a number ranging 0 through 7. It does not have any details in it.  This is where the complication /confusion comes in. Following is what I understand (but some possibility of errors. please let me know if you don't agree with my understanding). It goes in a few steps as follows.

Step 1 :  A TCI State table called 'tci-StatesToAddModList' is defined in PDSCH-Config. The max size of the table is 128.

Step 2 : Select a subset of the tables from tci-StatesToAddModList and put them into a smaller table 'codepoint'. This is done by the 'TCI States Activation/Deactivation for UE-specific PDSCH MAC CE'. The max size of this table is 8.

Step 3 : For each PDSCH scheduling, the TCI field(Transmission Configuration Indication) field in DCI 1_1 indicate a specific index of the table defined in Step 2.

Examples of TCI configuration in RRC

One of the reality behind QCL is that it is extremly difficult to grasp the real meaning of it, but even harder reality is that it is even more difficult to configure those things in signaling message. I hope a few example illustration shown here would help you to get some big picture of the configuration.

TCI index in PDSCH is associated with csi-MeasureConfig as below.

PDSCH-Config.tci-StatesToAddModList.TCI-State.QCL-Info.referenceSignal.csi-rs

   --> CSI-MeasConfig.nzp-CSI-RS-ResourceToAddModList[Index]

Example 1 > PDCCH QCLed with SSB

Example 2 > PDCCH QCLed with CSI-RS

Example 3 > PDCCH QCLed with SSB and CSI-RS

Example 4 > CSI-RS beam QCLed with SSB beam

NOTE : Check out the meaning of qcl-InfoPeriodicCSI-RS.

Following is an example showing the colocating a narrow beam(beam 64) with a widebeam(ssb 0). Follow the color coding for the connection as shown above.

nzp-CSI-RS-ResourceToAddModList

{

    nzp-CSI-RS-ResourceId64,

    reourceMapping

    {

       frequencyDomainAllocation row1 = '0010'

       nrofPorts = p1,

       firstOFDMSymbolInTimeDomain = 4,

       cdm-Type = noCDM,

       density = three,

       freqBand

       {

           startingRB = 0,

           nrofRBs = 68

        }

     },

     powerControlOffset = 0,

     powerControlOffsetSS = db0,

     scramblingID = 0,

     periodicityAndOffset = slots160:40,

     qcl-InfoPeriodicCSI-RS =12

}

}

 

tci-StatesToAddModList

{

     ....

     {

         tci-StateId = 12,

         qcl-Type1

         {

             bwp-Id = 0,

             referenceSignal ssb :0,

             qcl-Type = TypeC

          }

          qcl-Type2

          {

             bwp-Id = 0,

             referenceSignal ssb :0,

             qcl-Type = TypeD

          }

      }

       .....

}

 

ssb-PositionInBurst longBitmap =11111111100000000....

RRC Messages on QCI

ControlResourceSet ::=                  SEQUENCE {

    controlResourceSetId                    ControlResourceSetId,

    frequencyDomainResources                BIT STRING (SIZE (45)),

    duration                                INTEGER (1..maxCoReSetDuration),

                                                       //maxCoReSetDuration = 3  

    cce-REG-MappingType CHOICE {

        interleaved                             SEQUENCE {

            reg-BundleSize                          ENUMERATED {n2, n3, n6},

            interleaverSize                         ENUMERATED {n2, n3, n6},

            shiftIndex                              INTEGER(0..maxNrofPhysicalResourceBlocks-1)

        },

        nonInterleaved                          NULL

    },,

    precoderGranularity ENUMERATED {sameAsREG-bundle, allContiguousRBs},

    tci-StatesPDCCH                 SEQUENCE(SIZE (1..maxNrofTCI-StatesPDCCH)) OF TCI-StateId

    tci-PresentInDCI                ENUMERATED {enabled}                OPTIONAL

    pdcch-DMRS-ScramblingID         BIT STRING (SIZE (16))              OPTIONAL

}

PDSCH-Config ::=                        SEQUENCE {

    dataScramblingIdentityPDSCH             INTEGER (0..1007)    OPTIONAL,

    dmrs-DownlinkForPDSCH-MappingTypeA      SetupRelease { DMRS-DownlinkConfig }  OPTIONAL,   

    dmrs-DownlinkForPDSCH-MappingTypeB      SetupRelease { DMRS-DownlinkConfig }  OPTIONAL,  

    tci-StatesToAddModList                  SEQUENCE (SIZE(1..maxNrofTCI-States))

                                                OF TCI-State    OPTIONAL,   -- Need N

    tci-StatesToReleaseList                 SEQUENCE (SIZE(1..maxNrofTCI-States))

                                                OF TCI-StateId  OPTIONAL,   -- Need N

    vrb-ToPRB-Interleaver                   ENUMERATED {n2, n4},

    resourceAllocation                      ENUMERATED { resourceAllocationType0,

                                                         resourceAllocationType1,

                                                         dynamicSwitch},

    pdsch-AllocationList                    SEQUENCE (SIZE(1..maxNrofDL-Allocations))

                                                OF PDSCH-TimeDomainResourceAllocation ,

    pdsch-AggregationFactor                 ENUMERATED { n2, n4, n8 } OPTIONAL, 

    rateMatchPatternToAddModList            SEQUENCE (SIZE (1..maxNrofRateMatchPatterns))

                                                 OF RateMatchPattern    OPTIONAL, -- Need N

    rateMatchPatternToReleaseList           SEQUENCE (SIZE (1..maxNrofRateMatchPatterns))

                                                 OF RateMatchPatternId     OPTIONAL, -- Need N

    rateMatchPatternGroup1                  SEQUENCE (SIZE (1..maxNrofRateMatchPatterns))

                                                 OF RateMatchPatternId     OPTIONAL, -- Need R

    rateMatchPatternGroup2                  SEQUENCE (SIZE (1..maxNrofRateMatchPatterns))

                                                 OF RateMatchPatternId     OPTIONAL, -- Need R

    rbg-Size                                ENUMERATED {config1, config2},

    mcs-Table                               ENUMERATED {qam64, qam256},

    maxNrofCodeWordsScheduledByDCI          ENUMERATED {n1, n2} OPTIONAL,   -- Need R

    prb-BundlingType                    CHOICE {

        static                                  SEQUENCE {

            bundleSize                              ENUMERATED { n4, wideband }  OPTIONAL  

        },

        dynamic                                 SEQUENCE {

            bundleSizeSet1                          ENUMERATED { n4,

                                                                 wideband,

                                                                 n2-wideband,

                                                                 n4-wideband

                                                                }  OPTIONAL,   -- Need S

            bundleSizeSet2                          ENUMERATED { n4,

                                                                 wideband

                                                                } OPTIONAL    -- Need S

        }

    },

    zp-CSI-RS-ResourceToAddModList          SEQUENCE (SIZE (1..maxNrofZP-CSI-RS-Resources))

                                                OF ZP-CSI-RS-Resource   OPTIONAL,   -- Need N

    zp-CSI-RS-ResourceToReleaseList         SEQUENCE (SIZE (1..maxNrofZP-CSI-RS-Resources))

                                                OF ZP-CSI-RS-ResourceId OPTIONAL,   -- Need M

    aperiodic-ZP-CSI-RS-ResourceSetsToAddModList    SEQUENCE (SIZE (1..maxNrofZP-CSI-RS-Sets))

                                                OF ZP-CSI-RS-ResourceSet   OPTIONAL, -- Need N

    aperiodic-ZP-CSI-RS-ResourceSetsToReleaseList   SEQUENCE (SIZE (1..maxNrofZP-CSI-RS-Sets))

                                                OF ZP-CSI-RS-ResourceSetId   OPTIONAL, -- Need N

    sp-ZP-CSI-RS-ResourceSetsToAddModList   SEQUENCE (SIZE (1..maxNrofZP-CSI-RS-Sets))

                                                OF ZP-CSI-RS-ResourceSet     OPTIONAL, -- Need N

    sp-ZP-CSI-RS-ResourceSetsToReleaseList  SEQUENCE (SIZE (1..maxNrofZP-CSI-RS-Sets))

                                                OF ZP-CSI-RS-ResourceSetId   OPTIONAL, -- Need N

    ...

}

TCI-State ::=            SEQUENCE {

    tci-StateId               TCI-StateId,

    qcl-Type1                       QCL-Info,

    qcl-Type2                       QCL-Info          OPTIONAL,   -- Need R

    ...

}

QCL-Info ::=                   SEQUENCE {

    cell                             ServCellIndex    OPTIONAL,   -- Need R

    bwp-Id                           BWPId            OPTIONAL, -- Cond CSI-RS-Indicated

    referenceSignal                     CHOICE {

        csi-rs                              NZP-CSI-RS-ResourceId,

        ssb                                 SSB-Index

    },

    qcl-Type                            ENUMERATED {typeA, typeB, typeC, typeD},

    ...

}

NZP-CSI-RS-ResourceSet ::=          SEQUENCE {

    nzp-CSI-ResourceSetId               NZP-CSI-RS-ResourceSetId,   

    nzp-CSI-RS-Resources                SEQUENCE (SIZE (1..maxNrofNZP-CSI-RS-ResourcesPerSet))

                                                OF NZP-CSI-RS-ResourceId,

    repetition                          ENUMERATED { on, off } OPTIONAL,

    aperiodicTriggeringOffset           INTEGER(0..4)          OPTIONAL,   -- Need S

    trs-Info                            ENUMERATED {true}      OPTIONAL,   -- Need R

    ...

}

trs-Info : Indicates that the antenna port for all NZP-CSI-RS resources in the CSI-RS resource set is same. If the field is absent or released the UE applies the value "false"  

CSI-MeasConfig ::= SEQUENCE {

   nzp-CSI-RS-ResourceToAddModList          SEQUENCE (SIZE (1..maxNrofNZP-CSI-RS-Resources))

                                                OF NZP-CSI-RS-Resource OPTIONAL,

   ..

}

NZP-CSI-RS-Resource ::= SEQUENCE {

   nzp-CSI-RS-ResourceId      NZP-CSI-RS-ResourceId,

   resourceMapping            CSI-RS-ResourceMapping,

   powerControlOffset         INTEGER (-8..15),

   powerControlOffsetSS       ENUMERATED{db-3, db0, db3, db6} OPTIONAL, -- Need R

   scramblingID               ScramblingId,

   periodicityAndOffset       CSI-ResourcePeriodicityAndOffset OPTIONAL,-

   qcl-InfoPeriodicCSI-RS     TCI-StateId OPTIONAL, -- Cond Periodic

   ...

}

qcl-InfoPeriodicCSI-RS : For a target periodic CSI-RS, contains a reference to one TCI-State in TCI-States for providing the QCL source and QCL type. For periodic CSI-RS, the source can be SSB or another periodic-CSI-RS. Refers to the TCI-State which has this value for tci-StateId and is defined in tci-StatesToAddModList in the PDSCH-Config included in the BWPDownlink corresponding to the serving cell and to the DL BWP to which the resource belongs to.

CSI-RS-ResourceMapping ::= SEQUENCE {

   frequencyDomainAllocation CHOICE {

      row1     BIT STRING (SIZE (4)),

      row2     BIT STRING (SIZE (12)),

      row4     BIT STRING (SIZE (3)),

      other    BIT STRING (SIZE (6))

   },

   nrofPorts                       ENUMERATED {p1,p2,p4,p8,p12,p16,p24,p32},

   firstOFDMSymbolInTimeDomain     INTEGER (0..13),

   firstOFDMSymbolInTimeDomain2    INTEGER (2..12) OPTIONAL, -- Need R

   cdm-Type                        ENUMERATED {noCDM, fd-CDM2, cdm4-FD2-TD2, cdm8-FD2-TD4},

   density CHOICE {

     dot5      ENUMERATED {evenPRBs, oddPRBs},

     one       NULL,

     three     NULL,

     spare     NULL

   },

   freqBand    CSI-FrequencyOccupation,

   ...

}

CSI-ResourcePeriodicityAndOffset ::= CHOICE {

   slots4       INTEGER (0..3),

   slots5       INTEGER (0..4),

   slots8       INTEGER (0..7),

   slots10      INTEGER (0..9),

   slots16      INTEGER (0..15),

   slots20      INTEGER (0..19),

   slots32      INTEGER (0..31),

   slots40      INTEGER (0..39),

   slots64      INTEGER (0..63),

   slots80      INTEGER (0..79),

   slots160     INTEGER (0..159),

   slots320     INTEGER (0..319),

   slots640     INTEGER (0..639)

}

Reference

• 3GPP TSG-RAN WG1 #87ah-NR - R1-1700771 : On spatial QCL definition
• QuasiCo-locationType-Drelation betweenhierarchicalbeamsina GridofBeamssetup. - Mohamad MESTOUKIRDI (Thesis paper)