One of the features that was introduced part of 5G NR 3GPP Release 17 is known as Small Data Transmission (SDT).
When small amount of data, in case of an IoT device, needs to be sent, there is no need to establish data radio bearers. The information can be sent as part of signalling message.
A similar approach is available in case of 4G LTE.
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There is one important feature in 3GPP NR Rel-17 , Small Data Transfer (SDT). This is used to transfer small amount of data in RRC_INACTIVE state. Small DATA (SDT) like:
Some examples of small and infrequent data traffic include Smartphone applications such as:
traffic from Instant Messaging services;
Heart-beat/keep-alive traffic from IM/email clients and other apps;
Push notifications from various applications.
Other examples are non-smartphone applications such as:
traffic from wearables (periodic positioning information etc);
sensors (Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks transmitting temperature, pressure readings periodically or in an event triggered manner etc);
smart meters and smart meter networks sending periodic meter readings.
3GPP defined RA based (two-step or four-Step) or Configured Grant (CG Type-1) procedure to transfer small data.
Below are RA based SDT procedure defined in 3GPP release 17
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