Nokia Networks demonstrated LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) carrier aggregation in small cells delivering a peak data rate of more than 200 Mbps.
The demo, which was conducted at a Nokia lab in Arlington Heights, Illinois, showed small cell LTE-A intra-site carrier aggregation. The test aggregated 2 x 20 MHz of TD-LTE using a TD-LTE capable Category 6 device resulting in a throughput approaching 220 Mbps.
Nokia said this testing demonstrated that the performance of its Flexi Zone small cells can be doubled using a single micro or pico base station.
Nokia Flexi Zone small cells support up to 600 active users or devices to enable operators to meet future growth in demand. Commercial Flexi Zone small cell deployments are already supporting heavy traffic loads of more than 150 active users per cell – a figure exceeding typical specifications for other small cell products on the market. The installations have also achieved 100% availability, even under high traffic load, while offloading 80% of traffic from the operator’s macro network.
“The market success reflects the ongoing development of our Flexi Zone small cells solution. When we first announced Flexi Zone micro and pico base stations, we did what many pundits thought was impossible by packing a macro sector’s worth of capacity into the industry’s smallest outdoor small cell and bringing full macro software parity,” said Marc Rouanne, executive vice president, mobile broadband, Nokia Networks. “We also promised to show that it would be possible to software upgrade a small cell to LTE-A. Now we’ve done that too.”
