What's New in 2019 - OSS ASN.1 and NAS Tools

2019 is going to be an exciting year for our customers. We will update our ASN.1 and NAS tools to support 3GPP LTE and 5G Releases 15. In addition to enhancing our existing tools with new value added features, we will also introduce new NAS/Java Tools for LTE and 5G as well as new S1/X2 ASN.1 APIs for C# and Java.

Following the success of our NAS/C, NAS/C++, and NAS-1Step products, we are releasing the first version of our NAS/Java Tools supporting LTE Release 14. Users will be able to serialize/parse NAS messages from/to Java objects. In addition, the Tools will provide direct conversion of NAS messages to XML or JSON format. In the second half of the year, the Tools will be upgraded to support LTE and 5G Release 15. OSS will also be updating the existing NAS/C, NAS/C++, NAS-1Step products to support LTE and 5G Release 15.

A new PrintNAS feature will be supported in our NAS/C and NAS/C++ Tools. This feature will enable users to extract the field name, field type (sequence, choice, integer, bit string, etc.), field value (for integers, booleans, strings, etc.), offset of the field within the encoded message, size in bits of the field within the encoded message, and a pointer to the parent of the field. This feature will be useful to those who are interested in knowing the encoding details of their NAS messages.

This year OSS is releasing our new S1/X2 ASN.1 APIs for Java and for C#. Both tools will initially support LTE Release 14. The next version of the tools will be augmented to support LTE Release 15. These APIs will significantly reduce your S1/X2 protocol implementation efforts and provide an easier and less error prone upgrade path to newer 3GPP Releases. In addition, OSS will be updating the existing S1/X2 and LPPa ASN.1 APIs for C to support LTE and 5G Release 15.

An ASN.1 Studio enhancement will automatically create several messages for an input ASN.1 specification. This feature is useful for customers who are testing, as it will automatically generate several different types of test messages for their specification.

ASN.1/C# Tools support for partial decoding will enable you to quickly decode preselected fields from incoming messages. The main advantage of using partial decoding is that, when looking for a particular component in a large message, you can directly receive the value of the component you are looking for without having to navigate through the large message structure. This feature will be useful in many application areas including Lawful Intercept, routers, protocol analyzers, and Self-Organizing Networks (SON).

3GPP is currently working on Release 16 which is expected to be finalized by the end of the year. This Release will include support for Multimedia Priority Service, Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) application layer services, 5G satellite access, Local Area Network support in 5G, wireless and wireline convergence for 5G, terminal positioning and location, communications in vertical domains and network automation and novel radio techniques, etc. The OSS ASN.1 Tools will support Release 16. New samples will be added and existing samples will be updated to demonstrate how Release 16 ASN.1 based protocols can be used with the OSS ASN.1 Tools.

3GPP Protocol Based Products	Availability
	3GPP LTE Release 14 Support	3GPP LTE Release 15 Support	3GPP 5G Release 15 Support
NAS/C LTE	Now	Now	N/A
NAS/C 5G	N/A	N/A	2Q2019*
NAS/C++ LTE	Now	Now	N/A
NAS/C++ 5G	N/A	N/A	2Q2019*
NAS-1Step LTE	Now	Now	N/A
NAS-1Step 5G	N/A	N/A	2Q2019*
NAS/Java LTE	2Q2019	3Q2019	N/A
NAS/Java 5G	N/A	N/A	4Q2019
S1/X2 ASN.1 API for C	Now	2Q2019	N/A
LPPa API for C	Now	2Q2019	N/A
S1/X2 ASN.1 API for Java	2Q2019	4Q2019	N/A
S1/X2 ASN.1 API for C#	2Q2019	4Q2019	N/A

N/A - Not Applicable

* Early Release available