End-to-End Latency and Reliability Performance of 5G in London

5G is expected to support mission-critical ultra- reliable low-latency communication services in addition to enhanced mobile broadband applications. Ultra-reliable low-latency communication refers to wireless communications where successful data transmission can be assured within extremely low latency bounds and with high reliability. In this paper, we investigate the network coverage and capacity of ultra-reliable low-latency communication services that are provided over realistic cellular deployments using 3.5GHz and 800MHz bands with NR and LTE-Advanced radio interface technologies (3GPP Release 15) and Vodafone's existing macro grid in London. An assessment of the existing fixed network core performance is done, which is connected to the simulations of the performance of the radio access network to get the end-to-end service perspective. It is shown that both NR and LTE-Advanced can fulfill 5ms latency target with 99.999% reliability. However, only NR can support the even stricter 1ms latency target, thanks to its flexible numerology. Furthermore, the ultra- reliable low- latency communication service capacity is shown to be very low for the LTE carrier compared to that of the NR, due to the scarcity of bandwidth resources at the LTE band, and the larger antenna arrays of NR. The evaluations include ray-tracing propagation modeling utilizing a 3D digital map of the coverage area together with site positions provided by Vodafone.