At the Mobile World Congress 2014, Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN) will extend LTE-Advanced Carrier Aggregation to 3 carriers for operators having a total bandwidth of up to 60 MHz and demo downlink data rates of up to 450 Mbps for individual users.
NSN’s Inter Cell Interference Coordination (eICIC) enables the telecom equipment vendor to handle capacity-focused LTE small cell deployments. The new solutions are software upgrades to NSN’s Flexi Multiradio 10 andFlexi Zone Micro/Pico base stations.
In 2013, NSN was part of the successful introduction of Carrier Aggregation in the world’s first three commercial LTE-Advanced networks in Korea.
At MWC 2014, NSN will be presenting the evolution of LTE-Advanced for maximum performance in data rates and network capacity.
Tero Peltola, vice president of FDD LTE at NSN, said: “Though it is possible to deploy LTE small cells without interference management, NSN’s eICIC solution boosts capacity by p to 30 percent with coordinated macro and small cell interference management techniques.”
Interestingly, this is not a new development for the 4G industry or announcement from NSN. On 20 January 2014, Korean telecom service provider SK Telecom announced it developed LTE-Advanced 3 Band Carrier Aggregation (CA) technology for the first time in the world.
The technology the company unveiled aggregates 3 bands – 20MHz+10MHz +10MHz – to support speeds of up to 300Mbps. With the successful development of this technology, customers will be able to experience the fastest LTE-Advanced speeds once the related chipset and devices are developed.
Global telecom industry experts forecast LTE-Advanced 3 band CA to become commercialized in the end of 2014.
Stephane Teral, principal analyst at Infonetics Research, said: “In 2013, LTE-Advanced has been launched commercially by the Korean operators and I expect a ramp-up in more markets during 2014. For wireless operators, LTE-A Carrier Aggregation increases competitiveness as it allows for large, high data rate pipes to be created out of fragmented frequency allocations.”
NSN is evolving LTE-Advanced towards higher network capacity by enabling efficient integration of small cells with the macro network. NSN’s eICIC solution manages interference while balancing the subscriber load across the small cell and macro layers.
Unlike competing standard-based eICIC offerings, NSN’s solution works with upcoming LTE-Advanced devices as well as with the LTE devices available today. This means that operators can expect improved multi-layer performance.