School of Specs TSG RAN — the group that specifies th…In depth

TS 38.300 · version 19.3.0 · 617 clauses · In depth · 115 minutes

TSG RAN — the group that specifies the radio

TSG RAN is the part of 3GPP that settles what happens over the air: the shape of the signal, the messages a phone and a base station exchange, the wires between base stations, how strong a transmitter has to be, and the tests a device has to pass before it is sold. It is one plenary that decides and six working groups that draft, and this course is about who owns which document, how a radio feature travels from a question to a rule, and how to read what comes out the other end. The technical heart is TS 38.300, the overall description of the 5G radio network: five chapters take it clause by clause, and every clause opens in the panel beside the text. Everything said about the groups, their documents and their meetings comes from a register built on this machine on 4 August 2026, and every number carries the question that produced it. Where the data cannot answer an obvious question — who chairs a group, why a vote went the way it did, when a release froze — the course says so plainly and points at the page on 3gpp.org that can.

Start at chapter 1 Sit the final test Look at the document first

This course was written against TS 38.300 version 19.3.0, and built from a source register generated 2026-08-04.

Same subject, different depth: quick start · overview ·

The document, all of it

One block per clause of TS 38.300, in the order they appear, sized by how much text the clause holds. Lit blocks are taught in this course.

Open the whole of TS 38.300 as a page

The chapters

Part 1 The group and its six parts

  1. 1 What TSG RAN is, and why the radio gets a group of its own The plenary and its six working groups, how much of 3GPP's paper they carry, and why the radio side could not be folded into the rest. 7 min
  2. 2 The six working groups, and where the line between them runs Who writes the physical layer, who writes the protocols, who writes the interfaces, who writes the radio numbers, who writes the tests, and what became of RAN6. 7 min
  3. 3 What the numbers say about the size and shape of each group Documents, meeting paper and people in the room, group by group — and the three different pictures they give. 7 min

Part 2 The radio itself, as TS 38.300 describes it

  1. 4 What NR is — the shape of the 5G radio network The two kinds of base station, the two interfaces that join them to everything else, and the split of work between the radio network and the core. 7 min
  2. 5 The radio protocol stack, sublayer by sublayer What MAC, RLC, PDCP, SDAP and RRC each do, what each one hands to the next, and which document specifies each of them. 8 min
  3. 6 The three states a device sits in Idle, inactive and connected — what the network remembers in each, who pages, and why the middle state was invented. 8 min
  4. 7 How a connection is set up, and how it is moved Random access, connection setup, resume, measurement, handover and what happens when a handover fails. 9 min
  5. 8 Where the radio network meets the core The NG interface, quality of service flows, the identities that cross the boundary, where security terminates, and what the radio network is never told. 9 min

Part 3 What the group writes down

  1. 9 The specification families, and what a number tells you How the 38 series is laid out, which block belongs to which group, where the pattern breaks, and how to turn a number into a page you can read. 7 min
  2. 10 The documents that attract the most change, and what that says The ten most-changed RAN documents, why the top of the list is radio numbers and test cases rather than architecture, and what a change request actually looks like. 6 min
  3. 11 How a radio feature travels from a question to a rule Study item, study report, work item, change request, pack — the five document types a feature passes through, with the counts and real examples of each. 7 min

Part 4 How the work gets done

  1. 12 The meeting rhythm — plenary, working-group week and bis Four plenaries a year, five working groups in one week, an extra week in between, and the one group that sits out of step. 6 min
  2. 13 Where RAN meets the groups that write the rest of 3GPP What actually crosses the boundary between the radio and everything else — parameters, sealed messages, one letter at a time — and what this course cannot tell you about the other side. 7 min
  3. 14 Conformance testing, and why a separate group writes the exam What RAN5 owns, how the test documents pair with the requirement documents, why base station testing sits elsewhere, and what a device has to declare before it can be tested at all. 7 min

Part 5 Following it yourself

  1. 15 How to follow TSG RAN yourself, from a cold start Eight steps from knowing nothing to reading the right document, using only addresses you can build from a number. 6 min
  2. 16 What the record does not tell you Eleven things this course cannot answer, why each one is missing, and where to look instead. 7 min

Testing yourself

Every question at once

86 questions, chapter by chapter, on one page — for revision after you have read the course.

Open all the questions

The final test

20 questions drawn across the whole course, marked at the end. 70 per cent to pass, and every miss says which chapter to go back to.

Sit the final test

What this course is built on

Chapters
16
Words written for you
22,180
Clauses covered
74 of 617
Figures from the document
135
Abbreviations
264
Published versions
62
Checked sources
1194
Sources this course cites
175

The document · Words · History · Documents around it · Every source