Drive Test Across Europe for 5G Cellular Multi-Connectivity in Roaming Scenarios: The Livestock Transport Use Case

Although the deployment of 5G networks in urban environments is currently underway, rural areas suffer from cellular coverage limitations due to the poor deployment of
5G infrastructure. This fact directly affects use cases related to technology development in rural communities. As a result, key performance indicators may not meet minimums to satisfy a certain service, such as connectivity for livestock transport. As a strategy to improve the reliability of communications, the use of packet duplication through several cellular networks is proposed in order to increase robustness in areas with coverage issues. This study, which emulates livestock transport conditions through an experimental drive test across Denmark and Germany, demonstrates how packet duplication improves reliability for 4G/5G networks concerning latency Round-Trip Time and DL/UL throughput, on routes driven by livestock transport trucks.