A Comprehensive Survey on 5G RedCap: Technologies, Security Vulnerabilities, and Attack Vectors

While 5G addresses extreme performance tiers, 3GPP Releases 17 and 18 RedCap fill critical mid-tier performance gaps for diverse applications like industrial sensors and consumer wearables. The existing academic literature remains fragmented, focusing on isolated metrics rather than a holistic synthesis. There is a significant need to integrate technical specifications with empirical industry data. This survey systematically reviews Release 17/18 specifications, integrating literature from 2021 to 2025. We consolidate academic simulations and industry empirical reports to facilitate a rigorous comparative analysis across critical performance indicators. Findings evaluate complexity reduction via bandwidth limitation, antenna reduction, and HD-FDD. We provide a comprehensive security threat matrix, mapping vulnerabilities like RACH spoofing and paging suppression to countermeasures. RedCap cannot match eMBB throughput or NB-IoT’s battery life. Consequently, legacy LPWA remains more suitable for simple, decade-long sensing tasks. This work contributes a novel use-case taxonomy and a security analysis. This study provides practitioners with actionable insights into complexity trade-offs and network security risks. Future research should prioritize AI-driven management and “zero-maintenance” IoT through advanced power-saving innovations.