AI 中文总结
研究密集体育场中蜂窝和Wi-Fi网络性能，用商用智能手机执行多种工作负载评估。发现蜂窝网络上行链路和延迟受比赛日人群影响大，Wi-Fi基础设施在下行吞吐量、上行链路和延迟弹性方面表现更好，证明局部Wi-Fi部署对吸收流量高峰很关键。
AI 中文摘要
圣母大学体育场足球比赛期间77,622名观众的聚集为无线基础设施创造了极具挑战性的环境。体育场部署了并发多层网络为户外用户服务。本研究使用商用智能手机执行网页浏览、WhatsApp消息传递和Instagram媒体发布工作负载，评估这些网络上用户感知的性能和QoE。实证结果表明，蜂窝网络在空体育场中下行链路性能强劲，但比赛日人群使上行链路和延迟性能严重受限，出现严重的蜂窝“上行链路差距”。在非独立（EN-DC）锚点拥塞时，网页浏览握手遭受灾难性的5,983毫秒P90首次字节时间（TTFB），图像上传失败率攀升至46%。窄带低频段FDD信道在上传期间保持稳健信道质量，但在活跃浏览测试中误块率（BLER）中位数达70%，导致页面加载失败率36.6%。相反，密集的体育场Wi-Fi基础设施下行吞吐量与最佳性能的5G独立（SA）部署相当，同时提供更好的上行链路和延迟弹性，比赛日页面加载失败率最低（3.9%），图像上传延迟退化仅为相对于空体育场基线的2.1倍。这些见解证明通过局部Wi-Fi部署进行密集化对于吸收严重的体育场流量高峰至关重要。
英文摘要
The concentration of 77,622 spectators during football games at Notre Dame Stadium creates an exceptionally demanding environment for wireless infrastructure. To handle this extreme user density, the stadium deploys concurrent multi-tier networks serving outdoor users: an enterprise 5/6 GHz Wi-Fi network with ~900 outdoor Access Points (APs) alongside high-density multi-carrier 4G/5G networks powered by a neutral-host small-cell Distributed Antenna System (DAS) with up to 129 unique cell identifiers (PCIs) per operator. This study evaluates user-perceived performance and QoE across these networks using commercial smartphones to execute web browsing, WhatsApp messaging, and Instagram media posting workloads. Our empirical results reveal that while cellular networks deliver strong peak downlink performance in an empty stadium, game-day crowd loads heavily strain uplink and latency performance, triggering a severe cellular "uplink gap." Under Non-Standalone (EN-DC) anchor congestion, web browsing handshakes suffer a catastrophic 5,983 ms P90 Time-to-First-Byte (TTFB), and image upload failure rates climb to 46%. Furthermore, while narrow low-band FDD channels (e.g., n5) maintain robust channel quality during uploads, they exhibit a 70% median Block Error Rate (BLER) during active browsing tests, driving a 36.6% page-load failure rate. Conversely, the dense stadium Wi-Fi infrastructure delivers downlink throughput comparable to the best performing 5G Standalone (SA) deployment while providing better uplink and latency resilience, yielding the lowest game-day page-load failure rate (3.9%) and bounding image upload latency degradation to just 2.1x relative to empty-stadium baselines. These insights proves that densification through localized Wi-Fi deployment is essential to absorb severe stadium traffic spikes.
CommentsSubmitted to the 20th ACM Workshop on Wireless Network Testbeds, Experimental evaluation & Characterization 2026 (WiNTECH 2026). 8 pages, 9 figures, 4 tables
