What can be done to improve 5G NSA traffic in Smart 5G enabled handsets?

Dear 5G experts

Can someone suggest me what can be done to improve 5G NSA traffic in Smart 5G enabled handsets?

If Smart5G is enabled in UE, the UE decides whether to send B1 MR to eNB for 5GSCG addition.

It is observed that UE is not sending B1 MR if 4G throughputs are good enough even if 5G NSA RSRP is good.

B1 Retry timer is already tuned from 30-10 s.

Is there any other way to push the UE out of this smart5G mode dependency?

Is there anything like step ramp for B1 reporting?

Is this smart 5G controlled by network parameters or mandatory feature in device end?

It is an on off feature in most of the devices.

In Apple 5G it is called Auto mode.

In Oneplus,Oppo and Realme it is smart5G.

Network unable to control this features algorithm running in UE.

  1. Apple iPhone 12+ and above series :
    Settings > Mobile Data Options > Voice & data > Set as : "5G On " // If this option is “5G Auto” , it will switch between 4G and 5G based on data requirement .

  2. OnePlus / Realme & Oppo 5G devices :
    Settings >Mobile Network>Advanced settings >Turn on 5G > Turn on Smart 5G - should be OFF

Thanks!

So it is for NSA only.

Hi, @eta004

Battery Saving and Temperature Mitigation (overheating) mechanisms defined in the UE which will result in sending SCG Failure (and most recently we found out that also NR-A2) to trigger the NR PSCELL removal autonomously. The UE algorithms’ determine that either the NR PSCELL is no longer necessary due to low data activity to save batery and/or UE is overheating at intensive modem/CPU/GPU usage.

This is a wild territory for the network side. Besides changing the B1 configuration, as you already mentioned, there isnt much we can do to improve the NR PSCELL utilization (let`s call this way).

The fact is, no matter what we do on the netowork side, while the UE algorithm defines NR PSCELL should be off, it will not send B1s.

To warp up, we also saw UE moving from SA to LTE on Temperature Mitigation (overheating) scenarios as well.

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