3GPP NTN in 5G & 6G: A Concise Introduction

Dr. Nishith Tripathi is a Research Associate Professor at Virginia Tech. He has 24 years of hands-on industry experience with designing, operating, testing, and optimizing commercial 3G, 4G, and 5G wireless networks. RAN algorithms designed by Dr. Tripathi have been used in commercial deployments. He has trained thousands of engineers on RAN planning and design, RAN operations, and RAN optimization for commercial 3G, 4G, and 5G networks. He has contributed significantly to 3GPP 5Gand 5G-Advancedspecificationsand 3GPP 6G workshops. NT has conducted extensive research in areas such as6G, 5G-Advanced,NTN, O-RAN, spectrum sharing, positioning, security, side link, and applications of AI in wireless communications. He co-authored the cellular industry’s first-ever and most comprehensive multimedia book on 5G, a textbook on Cellular Communications, a book on O-RAN fundamentals, and a pioneering monograph on the applications of AI in cellular networks. His book On the NTN has been accepted for publication inFall2025by IEEE/Wiley.

Professor Jeffrey Reed is the Willis G. Worcester Professor of ECE. Professor Reed’s research interests are wireless communications, wireless security, cognitive radio, software radio, telecommunications policy, and spectrum access. Reed has co-authored more than 500 articles and books. In addition, Reed co-founded several commercial companies, including Federated Wireless, which commercializes spectrum sharing; PFP Cybersecurity, which provides security solutions for IoT devices; and Cirrus360, which produces tools for rapid prototyping of O-RAN. Reed is the Founding Director of Wireless@VirginiaTech, a university research center, and co-founder of Virginia Tech’s Hume Center for National Security and Technology, where he served as the Interim Director. He also served as the Interim Director of the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative and is currently its CTO. Dr. Reed is a Fellow of the IEEE For contributions to software radio and communications signal processing and for leadership in engineering education.