Comparative Analysis of Small Cells Efficiency Between 4G and 5G

The fifth generation (5G) mobile network is designed to revolutionize mobile broadband technology by addressing the shortfalls of its predecessor the fourth generation (4G) mobile network, also known as the long-term evolution (LTE), with key considerations of higher data rate, improved power efficiency, low latency and better quality of service. This work analyzes the impact of small cells on the performance of LTE (4G) and 5G networks. In this paper, 4G LTE and 5G networks were simulated using Excel for simplicity and performance evaluations were carried out. The performance metrics used for the evaluations are basic system throughput and offloading. The results of the evaluations on both networks were analyzed. The results showed that 5G network performs better than 4G LTE network whether the small cell base station (SBS) is closer to the macro base station (MBS) or at the edge of the macro base station.