SingTel, Qualcomm and Ericsson demonstrate live FDD/TDD carrier aggregation
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SingTel, Qualcomm and Ericsson demonstrate live FDD/TDD carrier aggregation

SingTel, Qualcomm Technologies and Ericsson have completed a successful demonstration of FDD/TDD carrier aggregation using commercial hardware and software, in what is claimed to be an industry first.

The demonstration achieved 160Mbps downlink speeds, and is designed to provide operators with an innovative way of managing the phenomenal growth in mobile data traffic worldwide.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor and Ericsson’s LTE software was used during the demonstration which took place in SingTel’s office in Singapore on October 3 2014.

“The Snapdragon 810 processor builds upon our leadership in LTE-Advanced technology by supporting carrier aggregation across LTE TDD and LTE FDD,” said Serge Willenegger, VP of product management at Qualcomm Technologies.

FDD/TDD carrier aggregation allows operators to complement existing FDD networks with a cost-efficient deployment of TDD. Combining TDD and FDD spectrum via carrier aggregation enables low-band FDD to deliver strong uplink coverage, while the TDD band can be leveraged for higher downlink capacity.

We are already using dual-layers of LTE FDD with LTE-Advanced carrier aggregation, and we know the performance of our mobile network is critical to ensuring that our customers have a great experience on their smartphones and tablets,” said Tay Yeow Lian, MD for networks at SingTel.

“Therefore, we will continue to explore the future option of bundling even TDD spectrum into the LTE carrier aggregation to expand network capacity, allowing our customers to enjoy consistent high data speed download even in high-traffic areas.”

Ericsson is a market leader in LTE network technology and during the demonstration aggregated 20Mhz of LTE FDD spectrum with 20Mhz of LTE TDD spectrum to achieve peak rates of 260Mbps.

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