5G NR Mobility- Timing Advance

Timing Advance

In RRC_CONNECTED, the gNB is responsible for maintaining the timing advance to keep the L1 synchronised. Serving cells having UL to which the same timing advance applies and using the same timing reference cell are grouped in a TAG. Each TAG contains at least one serving cell with configured uplink, and the mapping of each serving cell to a TAG is configured by RRC.

For the primary TAG the UE uses the PCell as timing reference. In a secondary TAG, the UE may use any of the activated SCells of this TAG as a timing reference cell, but should not change it unless necessary.

Timing advance updates are signalled by the gNB to the UE via MAC CE commands. Such commands restart a TAG-specific timer which indicates whether the L1 can be synchronised or not: when the timer is running, the L1 is considered synchronised, otherwise, the L1 is considered non-synchronised (in which case uplink transmission can only take place on PRACH).

Reference – 3GPP