DECT NR+:Unveiling the Essentials of a new non-cellular 5G Standard for Verticals

DECT-2020 NR is a young radio standard developed by ETSI, which aims to provide a lean but powerful technical foundation for industrial IoT applications (IIoT) such as e.g. Industry 4.0, media content production, mission-critical or building automation and monitoring. The DECT Forum markets DECT-2020 NR as DECT NR+. In the fall of 2021, ITU-R adopted DECT-2020 NR as part of the IMT-2020 family of standards, also known as the 5th generation (5G) of wireless access technology. Driving underlying design objective of DECT-2020 NR has been to create a wireless communication technology, which can be deployed by anyone, be operated by anybody and used anywhere opening in that sense extensive opportunities for sustainable, independent or cooperative wireless connectivity solutions, especially for medium-sized industries. This paper provides an overview of the essentials of the state of the art in DECT NR+ represented by the ETSI TC DECT-2020 NR technical specifications. We describe the fundamental concepts of DECT-2020 NR, highlighting how application and solution development is facilitated, and propose various possible innovation paths influencing future standardization and spectrum policy concepts for local area private industrial networks. In addition, we point out options for governance models that can lead to democratisation of 5G and IIoT.