Evaluating Energy Efficiency: A Comparative Study of LTE, 5G-NSA, 5G-SA, and Private 5G Networks

This paper presents a comparative analysis of the power consumption of Long-Term Evolution (LTE), 5G Non-Standalone (5G-NSA), 5G-Standalone (5G-SA), and Private 5GSA networks on the user equipment (UE) side across two locations. In our results, 5G-NSA consumed between ${9 2 \%}$ and 111% more energy than LTE, while 5G-SA consumed 79% more energy than LTE. 5G-SA was ${6. 5 \%}$ more efficient than 5G-NSA, though both technologies remained less efficient than LTE. The most significant finding is that Private 5G-SA was 63% more energy-efficient than 5G-SA, highlighting the potential for energy savings through custom network designs. These findings offer insights for optimizing power consumption in next-generation mobile networks and highlight the need to establish guidelines for technology selection based on specific use case requirements.