Swisscom has tested an LTE-Advanced three-carrier aggregation solution combining LTE in both FDD and TDD modes. The demonstration used three carriers in two bands in a radio access network and used commercial-grade chipsets.
The Swiss operator deployed the solution on August 18, 2015 in a Swisscom shop in Zurich and connected to its live, commercial network. Two LTE TDD carriers, each with 20 MHz bandwidth in the 2.6 GHz frequency band (B41), and one LTE FDD carrier with 15 MHz in the 2.1 GHz band (B1) were used. The live demonstration in Zurich was supported by Ericsson Radio Access Network software 15B and hardware as well as by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X12 LTE modem.
Swisscom plans to roll out this solution to subscribers in Swiss metropolitan areas by summer 2016 to coincide with three-carrier FDD/TDD smartphone availability.
Ericsson said the combination of the three carriers in FDD-LTE and TDD-LTE will significantly enhance the future capacity of the network. The new technology will allow more users to benefit from peak data rates for downloads and uploads when using mobile internet, entertainment or enterprise services. In this specific set-up, a maximum 335 Mbps in the downlink was achieved.
