5G Multicast Broadcast Services Performance Evaluation

The latest generation of mobile communications (5G) has brought a revolution in the world of communications, bringing with it a series of advantages that are affecting different business areas, such as industry and communications. One of the topics with a wide interest in the world of the audiovisual industry is Broadcast/Multicast. In that sense, 5G New Radio (NR) specifications in Release 15 have not included the capabilities for Multicast/Broadcast for 5G. In the following release of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), Release 16, just the latest Broadcast capabilities specified under LTE in Release 14 were improved, thus leaving for the incoming Release 17 the Multicast Broadcast specifications for NR, known as 5G Multicast Broadcast Services (5G MBS). In this article we will perform a deep analysis of 5G MBS performance, comparing with LTE Broadcast capabilities, based on simulations using a system Level Simulator.