What's New in 2020 - OSS ASN.1 and NAS Tools

2020 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 and 16. In addition to enhancing our existing tools with new value added features, we will also introduce new NAS/C# Tools for LTE and 5G as well as our new S1/X2 ASN.1 API for Java.

The ASN.1 Tools will be upgraded to support LTE and 5G Releases 15 and 16. The OSS NAS/C, NAS/C++, and NAS/Java Tools, and NAS-1Step will be available for LTE and 5G Release 16.

Following the success of our NAS/C, NAS/C++, NAS/Java and NAS-1Step Tools, we are releasing the first version of our NAS/C# Tools available for LTE and 5G Release 16 in the second half of 2020. Users will be able to serialize/parse NAS messages from/to C# objects. In addition, the Tools will provide direct conversion of NAS messages to XML or JSON format. 

This year OSS is releasing our new S1/X2 ASN.1 API for Java supporting LTE Releases 14 and 15. This API 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 ASN.1 APIs for C and Java to support LTE Release 16 in 3Q2020.

ASN.1 Studio will be enhanced to automatically create several messages based on an input ASN.1 specification. This feature is particularly useful for customers when testing, as it will automatically generate several different types of test messages for their specification.

The ASN.1/C# Tools will support partial decoding to enable you to quickly decode preselected fields from incoming messages. A significant 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 is 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 June 2020. 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, 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 15 Support	3GPP LTE Release 16 Support	3GPP 5G Release 15 Support	3GPP 5G Release 16 Support
NAS/C LTE	Now	1Q2020	N/A	N/A
NAS/C 5G	N/A	N/A	Now	2Q2020
NAS/C++ LTE	Now	1Q2020	N/A	N/A
NAS/C++ 5G	N/A	N/A	Now	2Q2020
NAS/Java LTE	Now	1Q2020	N/A	N/A
NAS/Java 5G	N/A	N/A	Now	3Q2020
NAS-1Step LTE	Now	1Q2020	N/A	N/A
NAS-1Step 5G	N/A	N/A	Now	2Q2020
NAS/C# LTE	N/A	3Q2020	N/A	N/A
NAS/C# 5G	N/A	N/A	N/A	3Q2020
S1/X2 ASN.1 API for C	Now	3Q2020	N/A	N/A
S1/X2 ASN.1 API for Java	1Q2020	3Q2020	N/A	N/A

N/A - Not Applicable