A Primer on Bandwidth Parts in 5G New Radio

Abstract: The fifth generation (5G) wireless access technology, known as New Radio (NR), features flexibility to support a variety of usage scenarios. One of the basic concepts in 5G NR is bandwidth part (BWP), which is, at a high level, a set of contiguous resource blocks configured inside a channel bandwidth. BWP spans across many 5G NR specifications developed by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project. Understanding how BWP operates is vital to understanding 5G NR. This article provides an overview of the essentials of BWP in the NR technical specifications. We describe fundamental BWP concepts, BWP configuration methods, and BWP switch mechanisms. We also discuss user equipment capabilities in terms of BWP support and share our thoughts on use cases of BWP for NR deployments.