NTT DOCOMO and Huawei said their joint test has demonstrated that LTE can be deployed over the 5GHz unlicensed spectrum.
At present, 5GHz unlicensed spectrum is widely used for wireless LAN networks in many countries.
DOCOMO and Huawei have conducted experiments of Licensed-Assisted Access (LAA), a technology that expands LTE-compatible spectrum to unlicensed spectrum bands, providing complementary access for the LTE operator network.
Currently, LTE’s compatible spectrum bands are licensed between the 700MHz and 2.5GHz bands in Japan.
The indoor test found that LAA can work in 5GHz bandwidth, leading to cell capacity of approximately 1.6 times greater than that of IEEE 802.11n, a standard specification for WLAN.
The result says LAA can be utilized as an enhancement of LTE and LTE-Advanced.
NTT DOCOMO, which serves over 63 million mobile customers in Japan, plans to launch LTE-Advanced by March 2015.
Higher-speed data communications and a higher cell capacity in dense traffic areas should be achievable by utilizing the 5GHz spectrum for LTE and LTE-Advanced on a complementary basis in coexistence with wireless LAN, said NTT DOCOMO.
Seizo Onoe, executive vice president and chief technical officer at NTT DOCOMO, said: “We aim to contribute to the standardization of this technology, which inherits the highly advanced features of LTE, to further enhance the global user experience with wireless broadband.”
The standardization of LAA, which shows potential as a solution for condensed data traffic, is likely to be discussed later this year by 3GPP.
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