SK Telecom tests LTE-A five-band carrier aggregation on its commercial network
Since June 1, 2016, SK Telecom has been providing 500 Mbps LTE-A Pro service by applying 256 QAM technology to its tri-band LTE-A CA network. Also, the company has acquired additional spectrum in the 2.6 GHz band in May 2017, securing the basis for LTE-A five-band CA.
In addition, SK Telecom has successfully demonstrated the application of MIMO to its tri-band CA network, thereby securing the capability to provide 900 Mbps data speeds.
With the application of 4X4 MIMO – a technology that doubles the transmission speed – to a 20-MHz bandwidth of a frequency band, users will be able to download data at maximum rate of 400 Mbps per frequency band.
SK Telecom and Samsung Electronics are demonstrating this LTE-A Pro technology at Mobile World Congress, and plan to commercialize it within the first half of 2017.
“Through the demonstration of LTE-A Pro with SK Telecom, we have proven that it is not long before we realize the commercialization of 1 Gbps mobile communication, a dream speed in LTE,” said Park Dong-soo, Executive Vice President of the Network Business at Samsung Electronics.
Meanwhile, SK Telecom also announced that it, together with Ericsson, successfully demonstrated Licensed Assisted Access (LAA), the technology that uses unlicensed spectrum together with licensed spectrum for 4G LTE radio communication. By aggregating 80 MHz in licensed and unlicensed spectrum and applying 4X4 MIMO technology, peak data rates of 1 Gbps is achievable.
Per Narvinger, Head of Product Area Network Systems at Ericsson said, “With LAA, subscribers will be able to enjoy an even better LTE experience as unlicensed spectrum is used to boost data speeds. The LTE and Wi-Fi users will coexist in a fair way in the unlicensed bands and end users will benefit in indoor as well as outdoor environments.”
“With continued advancement of UHD video and virtual reality technology, there is growing a need for faster mobile telecommunications services,” said Park Jin-hyo, Senior Vice President and Head of Network Technology R&D Center of SK Telecom.
If you enjoyed this article, you will like the following ones: don't miss them by subscribing to :
