5G NSA Performance: A Measurement Study

Abstract

5G cellular technology has been widely deployed in several countries by multiple operators in the form of non-standalone (NSA) networks. These networks rely on the 4G control plane and switch to 5G's New Radio (NR) technology for use plane traffic on the radio access, while the transport network is the same as 4G's. Several promising use cases have been showcased, some on top of these commercial networks. However, there is still limited understanding of NR performance in the wild. In this paper, we measure the 5G NR throughput on a 5G NSA base station on campus using a COTS mobile device instrumented with a radio access protocol analyzer. We show that 5G NR user throughput reaches almost 1 Gbps, meeting enhanced broadband expectations. We observe that throughput performance for 5G NR suffers strongly from non-line-of-sight conditions. Further, we analyze throughput differences when there is walking movement when compared to static measurements. We identify unexpected behavior in 5G NR at one location, similar to other 5G per-formance studies. our results also hint at potential 5G NR rate adaptation inefficiency.

Topics & Concepts