School of Specs TSG RAN — the group that specifies th…Quick start

TS 38.300 · version 19.3.0 · 617 clauses · Quick start · 15 minutes

TSG RAN — the group that specifies the radio

Somebody had to decide, in writing and before anything was built, exactly how a phone and a mast talk to each other. That somebody is TSG RAN — a plenary and six working groups inside 3GPP, five of which still meet. Four short chapters here: why the job needs a committee at all, what each of the six groups worries about, what the 5G radio actually looks like in the group's own overall description, and where to go and read it yourself. It is the whole subject at a first-day altitude, and every number and every claim links to the file or the clause it came from.

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: overview · in depth

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 Who writes the rules for the radio

  1. 1 Who decides how a phone talks to a mast Why the radio has to be agreed on paper before anything is built, who inside 3GPP does that agreeing, and how much of 3GPP's output it accounts for. 4 min
  2. 2 The six groups, and what each one worries about RAN1 to RAN6 in one paragraph each, the document that marks each one out, and the sizes that show they are nothing like equal. 4 min

Part 2 What they wrote, and where to read it

  1. 3 What NR is, read off the document itself Two kinds of base station, two interfaces, the four layers a packet falls through and the three states a device sits in — enough to picture the 5G radio. 4 min
  2. 4 Where to look yourself, and what the record does not say How a feature travels from a question to a rule, the four documents worth opening at any meeting, where each kind of paper is addressed, and the things this data cannot answer. 4 min

Testing yourself

Every question at once

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

Open all the questions

The final test

10 questions drawn across the whole course, marked at the end. 60 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
4
Words written for you
2,888
Clauses covered
66 of 617
Figures from the document
135
Abbreviations
264
Published versions
62
Checked sources
1194
Sources this course cites
76

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