5G Stuff: NR Frequency bands - FR2 or mmWave

As per 3GPP TS 38101-1 (Rel15, 2018-03) version, 5G is expected to be operated in two Frequency Ranges (FR1 and FR2) and the bands in each FR as below

Frequency range designation	Corresponding frequency range
FR1	450 MHz – 6000 MHz
FR2	24250 MHz – 52600 MHz

Definition of frequency ranges

FR1 is also called as Sub-6 and FR2 is called as mmWave. 

FR2 is split into different bands as below with UL and DL freq bands with Operating mode. As seen, it is primarily supports TDD and n257 and n258 are some portion overlapped.

NR operating bands in FR2

Sub-carrier spacing for FR2 takes either 60 or 120 kHz (which I guess as to ease the oscillator implementation) unlike in FR1 supports 15/30/60 kHz.

And here Transmission bandwidths are supported from 50MHz to 400MHz unlike in FR1 5MHz to 100MHz.

SCS (kHz)	50MHz	100MHz	200MHz	400 MHz
	NRB	NRB	NRB	NRB
60	66	132	264	N.A
120	32	66	132	264

Maximum transmission bandwidth configuration N_RB

The minimum guardbands have been calculated using the following equation: (CHBW x 1000 (kHz) - RB value x SCS x 12) / 2 - SCS/2, where RB values are from the above table

SCS (kHz)	50MHz	100MHz	200MHz	400 MHz
60	1210	2450	4930	N.A
120	1900	2420	4900	9860

Minimum guardband for each UE channel bandwidth and SCS (kHz)

Further, split given for each FR2 band w.r.t SCS as below. It can be seen that for 400MHz channel bandwidth only SCS of 120 kHz supported.

NR band / SCS / UE Channel bandwidth
NR Band	SCS kHz	50 MHz	100 MHz	200 MHz	400 MHz
n257	60	Yes	Yes	Yes
	120	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
n258	60	Yes	Yes	Yes
	120	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
n260	60	Yes	Yes	Yes
	120	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Channel bandwidths for each NR band

Since the mmW frequency range is close to 30 GHz, it can support several Carrier Aggregations with the above max Transmission or Channel bandwidth (CBW) of 400MHz.

NR CA bandwidth class	Aggregated channel bandwidth	number of contiguous CC	Fallback group
A	CBW ≤ 400 MHz	1
B	400 MHz < CBW ≤ 800 MHz	2	1
C	800 MHz < CBW ≤ 1200 MHz	3
D	200 MHz < CBW ≤ 400 MHz	2	2
E	400 MHz < CBW ≤ 600 MHz	3
F	600 MHz < CBW ≤ 800 MHz	4
G	100 MHz < CBW ≤ 200 MHz	2	3
H	200 MHz < CBW ≤ 300 MHz	3
I	300 MHz < CBW ≤ 400 MHz	4
J	400 MHz < CBW ≤ 500 MHz	5
K	500 MHz < CBW ≤ 600 MHz	6
L	600 MHz < CBW ≤ 700 MHz	7
M	700 MHz < CBW ≤ 800 MHz	8
O	100 MHz ≤ CBW ≤ 400 MHz	2	4
P	150 MHz ≤ CBW ≤ 400 MHz	3
Q	200 MHz ≤ CBW ≤ 400 MHz	4

CA bandwidth classes