On the Performance of an Indoor Open-Source 5G Standalone Deployment
Arash Sahbafard, Robert Schmidt, Florian Kaltenberger, Andreas Springer, Hans-Peter Bernhard
Abstract
5G, the latest generation of cellular technology, targets not only enhanced data rates but also new applications which require, e.g., ultra-reliable low latency communication. Verticals like industrial automation or automotive, which want to make use of this type of wireless services, need experimental deployments to test the performance of 5G in various modes and environments for their use cases. Due to the ongoing stan-dardization process, experimental 5G networks based on open-source frameworks are especially well suited, as they provide the possibility to easily implement new features introduced by the yearly 5G standard releases. We thus present an experimental 5G standalone deployment, based on the OpenAirInterface, which is an open-source framework, that is being used both, commercially and for academic purposes. We evaluate coverage parameters including reference signal received power, reference signal received quality, and signal to interference and noise ratio both for single user and multiple user scenarios. The measured downlink data rate reaches up to 390 Mbps at a bandwidth of 60 MHz, which is close to the achievable theoretical value. The average latency both for uplink and downlink was measured to be 19 ms for the round trip time, while the minimum latency value was 6 ms, which is acceptable for many application.