Defined
Up to 6.912 MHz, 1024-QAM, 8 streams
The specification defines operating bandwidths up to 6.912 MHz, modulation to 1024-QAM, and MIMO to eight spatial streams.
OSI-ORB-TR2 · Version 0.9 Draft
The only 5G standard that needs no license and no carrier.
DECT NR+, formally DECT-2020 NR under ETSI TS 103 636, is the only non-cellular technology the ITU-R recognizes as part of IMT-2020. It sits in the 5G family alongside 3GPP New Radio on equal standing, designed from the beginning for the opposite operating point.
Section 1
The standard nobody has built yet.
Where 3GPP NR-U brings cellular architecture to visit unlicensed bands, NR+ was born there. The gap this report examines is between what the standard defines and what shipping silicon implements.
Manufactured
One vendor, one stream, 2.4 Mbps
The commercial ecosystem is effectively one vendor whose modem implements a 1.728 MHz channel, modest modulation, and a single stream, because that vendor built the part its battery-powered IoT market wanted.
The gap
Three percent of the standard
A fully standardized, ITU-recognized member of the 5G family of which perhaps three percent of the defined capability has ever been manufactured. That gap is the opportunity.
Section 2.1
The throughput envelope.
The arithmetic is bounded by spectrum: 10 MHz in the US DECT allocation at 1920 to 1930 MHz, 20 MHz in Europe at 1880 to 1900 MHz. Figures are per direction under a symmetric TDD split, calibrated against the known performance of shipping silicon.
| Configuration | Detail | US band, 10 MHz | EU band, 20 MHz |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shipping silicon today | 1.728 MHz, low MCS, 1 stream | approx. 1.2 Mbps | approx. 1.2 Mbps |
| Full-width carriers | Max MCS, 1 stream | approx. 23 Mbps | approx. 47 Mbps |
| 2x2 MIMO | Full-width carriers | approx. 47 Mbps | approx. 94 Mbps |
| 4x4 MIMO | Full-width carriers | approx. 94 Mbps | approx. 188 Mbps |
| Specification ceiling | 8 streams, full band | approx. 185 Mbps | approx. 375 Mbps |
A realistic first implementation, full-width carriers with 2x2 MIMO on machines and a 4x4 path on infrastructure, lands at 45 to 95 Mbps per direction: a forty- to eightyfold improvement within identical spectrum and identical regulatory conditions. Two honest qualifiers bound it. Peak modulation needs clean, short links, so working-distance sustained rates sit in the tens of megabits even on perfect silicon; and every stream and megahertz trades against link budget, so a deployed deterministic tier will often run deliberately below its ceiling to hold range and reliability.
Section 2.2
Throughput is the variable. The properties are constants.
These are the reason NR+ holds its position in the ORB architecture at any data rate.
- A 1 ms slot structure with deterministic scheduling, engineered for low-millisecond latency and URLLC-class reliability targets.
- A native mesh: devices route for each other, self-heal, and coordinate with no base station in the loop, so the layer survives infrastructure loss outright.
- Reserved spectrum: the DECT band admits DECT technology only, so the layer faces no Wi-Fi, no ISM traffic, and no site data by regulation.
- Position at 1.9 GHz, far in frequency from every congested access band, making fate-isolation a property of the band and the protocol rather than of the implementation.
Section 3
What the headroom buys.
The correct frame is not a data tier competing with CBRS, which holds fifteen times the spectrum. It is an order-of-magnitude expansion of what fits inside the congestion-immune layer. At 2 Mbps that layer carries signaling; at 50 to 90 Mbps it carries payloads that today are forced onto best-effort spectrum precisely when they should not be.
Safety-relevant vision
Imagery inside the protected layer
Proximity-camera feeds, person-detection streams, and operator-assist video move inside the fate-isolated fabric, so the imagery safety decisions depend on cannot be degraded by the site's data load.
Aerial
Drone C2 with live downlink
An aircraft command link on reserved 5G spectrum, meshed for continuity if the base station drops, with enough capacity for command and control plus a low-rate video return on the same protected channel. This is the link-assurance profile BVLOS safety cases are effectively asking for.
Fleets
Dense fleet coordination
Rich state exchange between machines, trajectories, work-plan deltas, and sensor sharing, at rates that turn the C2 mesh from a signaling bus into a genuine coordination fabric for autonomous fleets.
Beyond ORB sites
Deterministic industrial control
URLLC-class latency, license-free deployment, and meaningful bandwidth address the factory, port, and process-control markets that today choose between expensive licensed private 5G and non-deterministic Wi-Fi.
One structural consequence for the roadmap: at full specification the NR+ tier in Europe carries roughly twice its US capacity, making the EU the strongest market for the deterministic tier and a natural lead geography for the safety-heavy verticals.
Section 4
Why programmable silicon is the right vehicle.
No merchant vendor is positioned to build full-specification NR+, and the market that wants the full standard is exactly the market that has never had a vendor.
4.1 Market structure
The customer the standard was waiting for
The incumbent optimizes for its battery-IoT installed base, where a wider part serves no existing customer, and the large cellular vendors have no incentive to fund a non-3GPP waveform competing with their licensed franchises. A programmable ASIP baseband inverts the economics: the waveform is a firmware program on silicon that already exists, so the investment is an engineering program rather than a tape-out.
4.2 Technical fit
Familiar PHY, distinctive MAC
NR+ reuses the engineering vocabulary of cellular OFDM: CP-OFDM waveforms, familiar channel coding, HARQ, and MIMO of the same family the ASIP already executes for LTE and NR. The distinctive work concentrates in the MAC, the 1 ms slot machinery, mesh self-organization, and the deterministic scheduler, which is control-plane software rather than exotic signal processing.
4.3 Symmetry dividend
One firmware tree, both ends
Because the same programmable baseband sits on both ends of every link, a full-specification port lands simultaneously on the ORB mast, the machine-mounted Oasis, the aircraft kit, and the dock. Every node speaking the identical implementation is the condition under which mesh protocols work as designed, and it is unavailable to any assembler of merchant parts.
Section 5
Why it is strategically interesting.
The claim is citable, the capability would be singular, and the option is cheap to hold and expensive to replicate.
- The deterministic tier runs on recognized 5G, license-exempt by design, not a proprietary mesh and not an industrial Wi-Fi variant. In front of aviation authorities, mining safety regulators, autonomy assurance teams, and public procurement whose language says 5G, that provenance is load-bearing.
- A full-specification implementation would be, at present, the only one in existence: the first hardware in which the standard's recognized potential is actually manufactured.
- For the platform it converts the deterministic tier from a thin signaling fabric into a protected transport an order of magnitude deeper than anything a competitor can buy, because it cannot be bought.
- The platform ships today on merchant NR+ silicon carrying the signaling tier; the full-specification port is a staged roadmap item on silicon and toolchains the program already engages for other reasons.
Diligence is a scoping engagement.
Three questions decide any candidate silicon: arithmetic throughput for 6.912 MHz at 1024-QAM across four streams, toolchain access open enough for a third party to maintain a non-3GPP PHY, and the RF front-end path for a 1.9 GHz TDD chain. None is speculative.