Evaluations of High Power User Equipment (HPUE) in Urban Environment

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the performance of High Power User Equipment (HPUE) in urban 5G networks, focusing on uplink throughput, modulation efficiency, retransmission rate, and power consumption in various configurations.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of HPUE performance in real urban environments, including firmware modifications and different antenna configurations, which is novel.

Findings

HPUE improves uplink throughput at cell edges.

Firmware modifications affect power class performance.

Different antenna setups influence overall efficiency.

Abstract

While Time Division Duplexing (TDD) 5G New Radio (NR) networks offers higher downlink throughput due to the utilization of the middle frequency band, the uplink performance is negatively impacted due to higher path loss associated with higher frequencies, which degrade the users QoE in less optimal conditions. With the growing demand for high performance uplink throughput from novel applications such as Metaverse, Internet of Things (IoTs) and Smart City, 3GPP introduced High Power User Equipment (HPUE) on 5G TDD bands, allowing UEs to utilize more than 23 dBm of power for transmission to improve throughput, QoE, and reliability, especially at the cell edges. In this paper, the performance of HPUE is evaluated in the urban area on a commercial 5G network in terms of Uplink Throughput, Modulation Efficiency, Re-transmission Rate (ReTx Rate), and Power Consumption in both Standalone (SA) and Non-Standalone (NSA) modes. Through modem firmware modification, the performance is also compared across different power classes and antenna configurations.