5G: THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH!

Vol 47: RedCap - Better Stay in your Lane - a Benchmark Study of 5G RedCap, 5G eMBB, LTE and LTE Cat 4 Devices

01/13/2025 | 42 pages
Price: $1,650.00

SRG just completed its 47th 5G benchmark study. For this endeavor we collaborated with Accuver Americas and Spirent Communications to conduct a benchmark study of a RedCap commercial device and how it performs relative to a 5G smartphone, an LTE smartphone and an LTE Cat 4 device. We used T-Mobile’s commercial 5G SA network in Irvine, CA where Ericsson is the infrastructure vendor.

Highlights of the Report include the following:

Our Thanks. We did this study with the support of Accuver Americas and Spirent Communications. Accuver provided us with its XCAL5 drive test software and XCAP post-processing software. We used the Umetrix Data platform from Spirent Communications to generate the downlink and uplink data traffic during our tests. Both companies have been trusted partners with us for nearly two decades. SRG is responsible for all analysis and commentary provided in this report.

The Scope. We did comparative stationary and drive tests using the four products. Our focus was on downlink and uplink coverage / capacity-related performance metrics, which is consistent with the use case of a standard USB dongle (the RedCap and LTE Cat 4 form factor). Future RedCap studies will include other RedCap attributes, including reduced signaling, reduced measurement reports, battery life, half-duplex FDD, VoNR, 1Rx versus 2Rx, etc.

The Results. As expected, the RedCap device underperformed the 5G smartphone with both downlink and uplink performance metrics, which included throughput, spectral efficiency (Mbps/RB) and coverage. Compared with LTE / LTE Cat 4, RedCap more than held its own in the downlink while uplink results were mixed.