Nokia and A1 Austria have announced that they have successfully verified 3 Component Carrier Aggregation (3CC CA) in a 5G Standalone (SA) trial network in Austria – reaching data rates of 2 Gbps.
CA allows mobile operators to reach higher throughputs and better coverage by combining different spectrum frequencies to efficiently utilise their spectrum assets. It will enable A1 to deliver a superior 5G experience to its subscribers.
The trial utilised Nokia’s AirScale 5G baseband, a 5G smartphone and a commercial 5G CPE over A1 Austria’s 5G network. It successfully combined two mid-band carriers in the 3.5 GHz TDD band (n78) and one capacity carrier in the 2100 MHz FDD band (n1) for a total bandwidth of 160 MHz by using Carrier Aggregation technology. The peak downlink data rate achieved in the trial was 2 Gbps.
Many operators are relying on sub-6 GHz spectrum for 5G. The lower frequency bands provide the best coverage and the higher frequency bands typically enable higher throughput, whereas the mid-band frequencies provide a good combination of both. With Carrier Aggregation, A1 was able to increase the available bandwidth for mobile users by combining the power of its spectrum assets.
Carrier Aggregation can also be used in other scenarios, for example, to combine low-band spectrum with mid-band spectrum for increased coverage range of the high downlink data rates.
Click below to share this article