Over-the-Air Performance Evaluation of an Open-Source Private 5G SA Network for B5G Experimentation

Abstract

The transition from early non-standalone 5G deployments to 5G Standalone and, more recently, 5G-Advanced has turned mobile networks into flexible, programmable infrastructures capable of supporting private, industrial, and research-oriented deployments for the development of beyond-5G applications and architectures. Evaluating these networks’ capabilities, however, remains challenging because commercial platforms often provide limited access to internal interfaces, radio parameters, and network measurements. This paper presents an open-source private 5G SA testbed for beyond-5G application validations built using Open5GS, srsRAN, Ettus USRP N310 software-defined radio, programmable SIM cards, and commercial 5G customer-premise equipment. The platform is deployed in a semi-anechoic chamber. End-to-end operation is validated through subscriber registration, authentication, PDU session establishment, and external data connectivity. The performance of the implemented 5G network is evaluated using throughput, block error rate, modulation and coding scheme, and gNB trace logs. Unlike previous open-source 5G testbeds that primarily use RF waveguides, individual network components, or a limited set of radio configurations, the proposed platform combines COTS SIM-based UE operation with a controlled over-the-air evaluation of FDD/TDD and multiple antenna configurations and correlates application-level throughput with internal gNB radio metrics. For FDD downlink operation, the average throughput increased by approximately 74% from 1 × 1 to 2 × 2 and by a further 57% from 2 × 2 to 4 × 4, although the additional peak-throughput gain from 2 × 2 to 4 × 4 remained limited. The platform provides a reproducible environment for validating beyond-5G mechanisms, comparing network configurations, and studying the behavior of future open-source 5G SA systems under controlled conditions.