BELLEVUE, WA --(Marketwired - October 21, 2014) - Carrier Aggregation (CA) is expected to be a key future-proof feature in the many LTE-Advanced networks that are being deployed today. Thus, it should be no surprise that 4G Americas, a wireless industry trade association representing the 3GPP family of technologies, today published a white paper on one of the key commercially deployed features of LTE-Advanced technologies titled, LTE Carrier Aggregation Technology Development and Deployment Worldwide . The paper provides in-depth information explaining how and why this technology feature will help solve the challenge of efficiently utilizing disparate spectrum swaths.
"LTE Carrier Aggregation is a key opportunity of LTE-Advanced and has become the main commercially deployed technical feature being utilized on virtually all 21 commercial LTE-Advanced networks to date," said Chris Pearson, President of 4G Americas. "The ability for an operator to broaden their mobile broadband wireless pipelines by using various pieces of spectrum, and combine them using Carrier Aggregation, makes perfect sense for the constrained data traffic environment that is challenging the industry."
CA is a key feature of LTE-Advanced that enables operators to create larger "virtual" carrier bandwidths for LTE services by combining separate spectrum allocations. CA provides spectrum efficiency and peak rates nearly on par with single wideband allocations. Therefore, the larger bandwidth provided by CA has proven to result in improved user data rates while enabling more flexible and optimal utilization of frequency assets. CA offers new opportunities to use non-contiguous bands for more frequency resources. CA is also fully backwards compatible, which essentially means that legacy 3GPP (3 rd Generation Partnership Project) Release 8 and LTE-Advanced terminals can coexist.
CA has also been designed to be a future-proof technology with great potential into and beyond 3GPP Release 12. CA will extend to multiple carriers, aggregation of varied licensed spectrum (possibly unlicensed spectrum) and will be the technology to enable IMT-Advanced speeds of 1 Gbps. Looking forward, there will be multiple and varied deployments of CA tailored to operators' specific requirements.
Prakash Moorut, Senior Research Specialist at Nokia Networks, co-editor and one of the work group leaders of the white paper commented, "New bands are being defined for LTE as governments around the world are releasing new spectrum resources through auctions and swaps. By using Carrier Aggregation, service providers are able to efficiently organize their spectrum resources to meet the exponential growth of mobile data and move down the path of innovative technology advancements."
LTE Carrier Aggregation Technology Development and Deployment Worldwide was written collaboratively by members of 4G Americas and is available for free download at: www.4gamericas.org .
About 4G Americas: Unifying the Americas through Mobile Broadband Technology 4G Americas is an industry trade organization composed of leading telecommunications service providers and manufacturers. The organization's mission is to advocate for and foster the advancement and full capabilities of the 3GPP family of mobile broadband technologies, including LTE-Advanced, throughout the ecosystem's networks, services, applications and wirelessly connected devices in the Americas. 4G Americas contributes to the success of 3GPP technologies and their No. 1 place in the region. 4G Americas is headquartered in Bellevue, Wash. More information is available at www.4gamericas.org or www.facebook.com/4gamericas and www.twitter.com/4gamericas .
4G Americas' Board of Governors members include: Alcatel-Lucent, América Móvil, AT&T, Cable & Wireless, Cisco, CommScope, Entel, Ericsson, HP, Intel, Mavenir, Nokia, Openwave Mobility, Qualcomm, Rogers, Sprint, T-Mobile USA and Telefónica.
