5G NSA vs Stand Alone
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
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In previous publications and social media, we’ve indicated there are two primary motivators for upgrading to 5G Standalone (SA), and neither one of them involves network slicing. One motivator is that 5G SA improves handover optimisation, especially in a small cell network where there can be frequent ping ponging with the anchor macro cell (LTE), as well as with secondary small cells (5G). By removing the LTE component, the smartphone (UE) can simply leverage the best 5G small cell without having to worry about the LTE macro cell and the optimal pairing of macro and small cell. The other motivating factor is the impact 5G SA can have on improving enduser data speeds and spectral efficiency, in particular in the uplink direction. The focus of this Signals Flash report is to prove this latter argument with real world performance data.
KEY HIGHLIGHTS AND OBSERVATIONS
Our Thanks. We leveraged test equipment from Accuver Americas (XCAL5 and XCAP) as well as from Keysight Technologies (Umetrix Data). Both companies have been trusted partners for nearly two decades.
Our Methodology. We used two Motorola razr fold 2026 smartphones – one configured to support 5G SA (Band n2) and the other one configured to support 5G NSA (Band n2 + LTE Band 66). We did walk testing with both smartphones while the two phones simultaneously uploaded data (UDP full buffer) on the Verizon network (Ericsson infrastructure). We then analyzed the data using our standard methodology and metrics, with analysis looking at performance as a function of RSRP as well as geo binned data.
The Results. The results show the 5G SA smartphone had 2.2x higher spectral efficiency than the 5G NSA smartphone. The higher spectral efficiency was evident with both the 5G radio channel (Band n2 = 10 MHz) and especially the LTE radio channel (Band 66 = 20 MHz).
The Explanation. With 5G SA, the smartphone used uplink MIMO (2 data layers) while with 5G NSA, there was a single data layer on 5G and another data layer on LTE. LTE is also less spectral efficient than 5G. We also limited our analysis to 32T32R radios, although we note both LTE Band 66 and 5G Band n2 used the same massive MIMO radio.
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5G NSA vs Stand Alone
