Catch the Pitch of 5G FWA: EMF and Throughput Measurements of 3.5-GHz Standalone Deployment in a Baseball Stadium

Abstract

The provisioning of 5G technology does not only involve mobile terminals, but also new services such as Fixed Wireless Access (FWA). The aim of this study is to examine the ElectroMagnetic Field (EMF) and throughput performance of a FWA deployment utilizing Standalone technology operating at 3.5 GHz. To address the unique characteristics of 5G FWA signals, an innovative framework has been designed based on the measurement of 5G FWA spectrum using four independent chains and an additional traffic generation chain to saturate the radio link capacity at the measurement location. Methodologies for evaluating 5G FWA exposure under conservative conditions, such as measurements of exposure during active traffic generation and maximum power extrapolations, are also introduced. Results from real measurements taken at a baseball stadium show that 5G FWA exposure is consistently low, typically below 0.4 V/m, with an upper bound of 0.59 V/m, while the achieved throughput is up to 250 Mbps. Additionally, the measured 5G exposure levels are a small fraction compared to those emitted by other technologies such as 4G. Furthermore, the values estimated by simulation from the output power counters of the base station are found to be in close agreement with the measured exposure levels.