Comprehensive Design and Field Performance Assessment of Early 5G NSA Private Networks for Industrial IoT Campuses

Abstract

The authors introduce an in-depth design and performance evaluation of the first 5G Non-Standalone (NSA) private networks deployment over industrial IoT system. Testing and measurements through the different methods or techniques used in the study include all drive tests in real time, indoor walk and controlled lab emulation. Measures such as uplink/downlink latency, jitter, mobility behavior, reliability and throughput of different industrial workloads are thoroughly evaluated. The performance is compared through Wi-Fi 6 and private LTE to point out the difference in mobility robustness, interference tolerance and QoS predictability. The factors such as choice of spectrum e.g. licensed and CBRS bands, indoor RF planning difficulties and uplink-centric traffic patterns are evaluated in the analysis to come up with deployment insights that are of practical value. The authors provide both the performance improvements and architectural restrictions of early NSA systems as guides in the continuous transition process towards complete standalone 5G private networks.