Dynamic Control of Packet Duplication in 5G-NR Dual Connectivity Architecture

Packet duplication is a technique proposed by 3GPP to enhance the throughput and reliability in 5G networks. This can be activated in both dual connectivity and carrier aggregation architectures. Currently, in 3GPP 5G NR specifications, packet duplication is semi-statically controlled via higher layer signaling. However, this may lead to loss of throughput as it may be activated even when it is not necessary. In this paper, we study dynamic activation of packet duplication based on certain parameters of a user equipment (UE) and show that there is a reliability-vs-throughput trade-off that must be handled carefully when using this feature. Extensive numerical results are presented to support the findings in this paper.