Unveiling the 5G Mid-Band Landscape: From Network Deployment to Performance and Application QoE

Abstract

5G in mid-bands has become the dominant deployment of choice in the world. We present - to the best of our knowledge - the first comprehensive and comparative cross-country measurement study of commercial mid-band 5G deployments in Europe and the U.S., filling a gap in the existing 5G measurement studies. We unveil the key 5G mid-band channels and configuration parameters used by various operators in these countries, and identify the major factors that impact the observed 5G performance both from the network (physical layer) perspective as well as the application perspective. We characterize and compare 5G mid-band throughput and latency performance by dissecting the 5G configurations, lower-layer parameters as well as deployment settings. By cross-correlating 5G parameters with the application decision process, we demonstrate how 5G parameters affect application QoE metrics and suggest a simple approach for QoE enhancement. Our study sheds light on how to better configure and optimize 5G mid-band networks, and provides guidance to users and application developers on operator choices and application QoE tuning. We released the datasets and artifacts at https://github.com/SIGCOMM24-5GinMidBands/artifacts.