Analysis of 5G SA Carrier Aggregation on UE Current Consumption

The evolution to 5G has significantly increased data transmission speeds, with Carrier Aggregation (CA) being a key technology for boosting throughput. While CA combines multiple carrier frequencies to achieve higher data rates, it can also increase energy consumption, a critical concern for mobile devices. This study investigates the impact of intra-band CA on current consumption in a 5G Stand-Alone network using the N78 band. Results show that using two 50 MHz carriers increases energy consumption by 33.46% compared to a single carrier, despite providing similar bandwidth. Conversely, a single 100 MHz carrier offers a 5.3% throughput improvement with better energy efficiency. Specifically, a two-carrier configuration achieves up to 835 Mbps with 100 MHz bandwidth per carrier but consumes 454.8 mA, compared to 317.3 mA for a single carrier. The study shows that depending on the specific needs and constraints of a device or application, choosing between single-carrier and multi-carrier configurations might be necessary to optimize both performance and energy efficiency.