Real-World Performance Evaluations of Low-Band 5G NR/4G LTE 4x4 MIMO on Commercial Smartphones
Pasapong Wongprasert, Kasidis Arunruangsirilert, Jiro Katto
TL;DR
The paper tackles real-world performance of low-band $4 \times 4$ MIMO on commercial UEs using NR Band 28, assessing reliability under weak signal and maximum throughput under favorable conditions. It employs field tests across multiple devices (Xperia 1 III/IV, OnePlus 11, ASUS EXP21) and network setups (dtac AIS) with NSA/SA configurations, collecting modem metrics via NSG and conducting Iperf3 and Ookla throughput tests, including firmware-modified 2Rx configurations for reference. Key findings show that low-band $4 \times 4$ MIMO improves reliability in edge conditions and can achieve higher-than-2–layer throughput, but gains are less pronounced than on higher bands; NSA introduces bottlenecks due to MCG-SCG coupling, highlighting practical constraints for low-band NR deployment. The work provides actionable insights for UE antenna design and operator planning, and establishes a real-world benchmark data set for future network upgrades and rollout decisions.
Abstract
All 3GPP-compliant commercial 5G New Radio (NR)-capable UEs on the market are equipped with 4x4 MIMO support for Mid-Band frequencies (>1.7 GHz) and above, enabling up to rank 4 MIMO transmission. This doubles the theoretical throughput compared to rank 2 MIMO and also improves reception performance. However, 4x4 MIMO support on low-band frequencies (<1 GHz) is absent in every commercial UEs, with the exception of the Xperia 1 flagship smartphones manufactured by Sony Mobile and the Xiaomi 14 Pro as of January 2024. The reason most manufacturers omit 4x4 MIMO support for low-band frequencies is likely due to design challenges or relatively small performance gains in real-world usage due to the lack of 4T4R deployment on low-band by mobile network operators around the world. In Thailand, 4T4R deployment on the b28/n28 (APT) band is common on True-H and dtac networks, enabling 4x4 MIMO transmission on supported UEs. In this paper, the real-world 4x4 MIMO performance on the b28/n28 (APT) band will be investigated by evaluating the reliability test under different signal conditions and the maximum throughput test by evaluating the performance under optimal conditions, using the Sony Xperia 1 III and the Sony Xperia 1 IV smartphone. Devices from other manufacturers are also used in the experiment to investigate the performance with 2Rx antennas for comparison. Through firmware modifications, the Sony Xperia 1 III and IV can be configured to use only 2 Rx ports on low-band, enabling the collection of comparative 2 Rx performance data as a reference.