The current contention-free random access forces a "Msg3" (which does
not exist in CFRA) to be received by a UE. Sometimes, this "Msg3" is not
received (for whatever reason), and the MAC declare that RA failed.
This is problematic, as the spec says that RA is complete once Msg2 is
received by the UE. To avoid this, inconditionally mark RA as complete
as soon as we receive an indication of Msg3 (DTX or not).
Note that after this change, we still send a UL grant in Msg2. This is
because 38.321 §5.1.4 is not clear to me whether we should send UL grant
(it does not explicitly exclude it), and it says
> 3> if the Random Access Response includes a MAC subPDU with RAPID only:
> [...]
> 4> indicate the reception of an acknowledgement for SI request to
> upper layers.
which is NOT the case (but then I don't know/think we can have CFRA for
SI request?). Since it also works with COTS UE, I leave Msg3 for the
moment.
The reason to not directly mark RA as complete when sending Msg2 is
because of possible retransmissions in do-ra mode. In fact, in do-ra,
there might already be data awaiting. In that case, the DLSCH scheduler
schedules data _in the same slot as Msg2_, which the UE does not decode,
leading to retransmissions.
Robert Schmidt
8ea95a0e52