Carrier aggregation is creating new opportunities for carriers to make better use of their spectrum, and now the technology has made its way onto the chips that power small cell base stations. LTE modems that aggregate frequency bands have been used in smartphones, but the appearance of these chips in small cells means that carriers could soon be able to build the technology into their networks.
Next week at Mobile World Congress, Mindspeed Technologies and Radisys will demonstrate an LTE-A small cell combining two radios into a single connection to the core network. One radio will be connected at 700MHz and the other at 2.6GHz. The chip can combine the two radio channels into a single IP stream to the enhanced packet core.
“Using [frequency bands] together you can pass users from one to the other seamlessly and you can combine the two to deliver more capacity just where you need it,” said Mindspeed’s vice president of strategic marketing Rupert Baines.
Increased throughput is another benefit of carrier aggregation. Japan’s NTT DOCOMO says it is launching small cells that will be able to aggregate up to 100MHz of carrier bandwidth, for a maximum throughput of 3 Gbps. This week the carrier announced a solution that uses a macro cell to aggregate up to 48 distributed small cells. The company says carrier aggregation will be supported for all small cells, and that the small cells can be added to the network as needed for localized coverage, communicating with macro cells that provide the wider area coverage. The solution is tailored for large, densely populated venues.
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