Machine Learning vs. Deep Learning in 5G Networks -- A Comparison of Scientific Impact

Introduction of fifth generation (5G) wireless network technology has matched the crucial need for high capacity and speed needs of the new generation mobile applications. Recent advances in AI also empowered 5G cellular networks with two mainstreams as ML and deep learning (DL) techniques. Our study aims to uncover the differences in scientific impact for these two techniques by the means of statistical bibliometrics. The performed analysis includes citation performance with respect to indexing types, funding availability, journal or conference publishing options together with distributions of these metrics along years to evaluate the popularity trends in a detailed manner. Web of Science (WoS) database host 2245 papers for ML and 1407 papers for DL-related studies. DL studies, starting with 9% rate in 2013, has reached to 45% rate in 2022 among all DL and ML-related studies. Results related to scientific impact indicate that DL studies get slightly more average normalized citation (2.256) compared to ML studies (2.118) in 5G, while SCI-Expanded indexed papers in both sides tend to have similar citation performance (3.165 and 3.162 respectively). ML-related studies those are indexed in ESCI show twice citation performance compared to DL. Conference papers in DL domain and journal papers in ML domain are superior in scientific interest to their counterparts with minor differences. Highest citation performance for ML studies is achieved for year 2014, while this peak is observed for 2017 for DL studies. We can conclude that both publication and citation rate for DL-related papers tend to increase and outperform ML-based studies in 5G domain by the means of citation metrics.