Nokia, Optus and Samsung Electronics Australia have completed a data session using three-component Carrier Aggregation (3CC-CA) technology over a 5G Standalone network in Australia. The companies claim it is the first time this has been done using a commercial smartphone.
Nokia said it has prioritized the development of 5G CA technology across sub-6 GHz 5G spectrum. 5G speed and latency depend on wide bandwidths, which are not always contiguous. Hence the need to connect separate frequency blocks into a single channel. CA, which was first used in LTE-Advanced, previously was only capable of grouping two spectrum blocks. The addition of a third spectrum block paves the way for advanced 5G use cases such as augmented and virtual reality, according to Nokia. Carrier aggregation also reduces the battery consumption of user devices.
Nokia used its latest commercial AirScale Baseband and radio portfolio powered by its Reefshark chipset over Optus’ commercial network. The trial combined the Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) band (2100 MHz) with the TDD (Time Division Duplex) band (2300 MHz + 3500 MHz) using CA technology.
In April, stc, Nokia and MediaTek verified 3CC-CA in a 5G Standalone network in the city of Makkah, Saudi Arabia. The companies used the combination of one FDD carrier (20 MHz) and two TDD carriers to create 180 MHz of spectrum using FDD-TDD CA technology. Nokia used its commercial AirScale Baseband, Massive MIMO and remote radio head products, with its Reefshark chipset on stc’s live network. MediaTek provided its 5G mobile platform featuring its Release 16-ready M80 modem.
Earlier this month, stc and Ericsson completed a two component TDD-TDD 5G Carrier Aggregation proof of concept, which was based on the introduction of 2.3 GHz 5G band and adding CA with the 3.5 GHz. Ericsson has been testing 5G non-standalone CA since late in 2020, when it aggregated 20 MHz on FDD spectrum and 100 MHz on TDD spectrum in live network conditions in Saudi Arabia.
By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor
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