Dissecting 5G in the Wild: Performance, Coverage, and Support for Next-Gen Applications  

Since its rollout, 5G has promised unprecedented data rates and ultra-low latency, with the potential to finally enable the next generation of bandwidth-intensive and latency-critical applications such as AR/VR, panoramic video streaming, cloud gaming, and connected autonomous vehicles, often dubbed as 5G “killer apps”. Yet, realizing this promise in practice has proven challenging. The use of higher frequency bands, while ensuring higher throughput, comes at the cost of reduced range and greater susceptibility to performance fluctuations. Moreover, the introduction of multiple frequency bands, the coexistence with LTE, and the availability of different deployment modes (Non-Standalone and Standalone 5G) have made the cellular ecosystem increasingly complex. While testbeds offer valuable insights, they often fail to capture the full range of real-world scenarios, as different network operators implement unique policies and configurations that are difficult to replicate in controlled environments.

 

In this talk, I will present my research efforts over the past five years to obtain a detailed understanding of the performance of today’s 5G networks and their potential to support 5G “killer apps,” track their evolution, and demystify operator policies through a series of large-scale measurement campaigns conducted in more than a dozen U.S. cities and across four cross-country road trips spanning a total of 15,000+ km. The talk will present the evolution of 5G coverage and performance over the past five years, explore 5G’s ability to support next-generation mobile applications, offer insights into resource allocation policies in operational 5G mmWave networks, and describe how these measurement insights can be leveraged to guide the design and development of systems for 5G and beyond-5G networks. Finally, I will outline my broader research vision, including future directions in experimental wireless systems and measurement-driven network design.