Bridging Mid-Band and Upper Mid-Band: A Comprehensive Coverage and Capacity Evaluation of 6G at 7GHz cmWave Versus 5G NR at 3.5GHz

Abstract

The upper mid-band spectrum (7–24 GHz), or centimeter-wave (cmWave), is a leading candidate band for sixth-generation (6G) networks. This paper compares coverage and capacity at 7 GHz against 5G New Radio (NR) at 3.5 GHz (C-band), using the operator-oriented dimensioning framework developed for LTE and 5G NR. Link budgets are built across four morphologies with 3GPP TR 38.901 propagation models and material-specific outdoor-to-indoor (O2I) penetration loss. We evaluate Extremely Large Aperture Arrays (ELAA) with a 256T configuration, Synchronization Signal Block (SSB) power boosting, and MU-MIMO spatial multiplexing as coverage compensation mechanisms, assuming Power Class 1 (PC1, 29 dBm) UE transmit power at cmWave. Together these mechanisms offset the roughly 6 dB of additional propagation loss at 7 GHz and give near-equivalent cell-edge data-channel performance. With 200 MHz of bandwidth, cmWave provides about <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$3.0\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> the sector capacity of C-band at 100 MHz, from a <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$1.5\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> spectral-efficiency gain (MU-MIMO) and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> bandwidth scaling. The results are benchmarked against recent measurement campaigns and system-level studies.