8. PDCCH Implementation and Blind Decoding in 5G Networks

Time: 90 min (video: 15 min + Chapter: 45 min + Code: 30 min)

In 5G New Radio (NR), the PDCCH (Physical Downlink Control Channel) plays a crucial role in downlink transmission. It is like the heart of data communication. If the UE is unable to decode PDCCH, then no matter what radio conditions are, UE can never be able to know the downlink/uplink grants for Physical Downlink Shared Channel (PDSCH)/Physical Uplink Shared Channel (PUSCH) and hence a user can not decode data.

Consider a scenario where we are watching a video on our mobile phone. Now the question that comes to our mind is how does our mobile phone knows on what time-frequency resources my data is coming, what modulation order and code-rate that a BS picks for data transmission, how many number of layers where used for transmission etc. All this critical information is defined as downlink control information (DCI). Now if our mobile phone fails to decode this information, then our mobile phone does not where to look for on a time-frequency resource grid and hence will not be able to display the video.

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