Performance of the 5th generation indoor wireless technologies-empirical study

Abstract

The evolution of 5th generation (5G) cellular technology has introduced several enhancements and provides better performance compared to previous generations. To understand the real capabilities, the importance of the empirical studies is significant to also understand the possible limitations. This is very important especially from the service and use case point of view. Several test sites exist around the globe for introducing, testing, and evaluating new features, use cases, and performance in restricted and secure environments alongside the commercial operators. Test sites equipped with the standard technology are the perfect places for performing deep analysis of the latest wireless and cellular technologies in real operating environments. The testing sites provide valuable information with sophisticated quality of service (QoS) indicators when the 5G vertical use cases are evaluated using the actual devices in the carrier grade network. In addition, the Wi-Fi standards are constantly evolving toward higher bit rates and reduced latency, and their usage in 5G dedicated verticals can even improve performance, especially when lower coverage is sufficient. This work presents the detailed comparative measurements between Wi-Fi 6 and 5G New Radio (NR) performance in indoor facilities and extensive results carried out in 5G and beyond test site located in Finland. The results gathered from the extensive test sets indicate that the Wi-Fi 6 can outperform the 5G in the indoor environment in terms of throughput and latency when distance and coverage do not increase enormously. In addition, the usage of wireless technologies allows improved uplink performance, which is usually more limited in cellular networks. The gained results of our measurements provide valuable information for designing, developing, and implementing the requirements for the next-generation wireless applications