Verizon, Ericsson, Qualcomm Technologies and Federated Wireless have announced the first ever use of CBRS (Citizens Broadband Radio Service) band 48 spectrum in an LTE Advanced(LTE-A) carrier aggregation demonstration.
The news follows other recent announcements from Qualcomm Technologies, Ericsson and Verizon including successfully reaching over 1 gigabit on LTE.
The CBRS band is made up of 150 MHz of 3.5 GHz shared spectrum which until now has been primarily used by the federal government for radar systems. The FCC has authorized shared use of the band with wireless small cells. Using the LTE Advanced feature of carrier aggregation, Verizon, Ericsson, Qualcomm Technologies and Federated Wireless were able to demonstrate LTE with carrier aggregation on this band and carry wireless traffic. Federated Wireless provided the Spectrum Access System to dynamically prioritize traffic within the FCC’s spectrum sharing framework for this band.
The demo, set in an Ericsson lab in Plano, TX included the end-to-end CBRS communication flow, using 2x20 MHz LTE carriers on the CBRS band 48, and employing a 256 QAM modulation in the downlink.
Ericsson provided the band 48 Radio Dot System and Domain Proxy for communication with Federated SAS. Qualcomm Technologies provided a Qualcomm Snapdragon LTE modem test device, and Federated Wireless provided the spectrum management service with their Spectrum Controller.
Nicola Palmer, Wireless Chief Network Officer, Verizon
The use of CBRS spectrum greatly advances our work in emerging spectrum bands. Verizon and our partners are leading the way in creating an ecosystem around the use of CBRS spectrum which will lead to greater capacity and speed for our customers.
Nishant Batra, VP and Head of Product Erea NEtwork Infratructure, Ericsson
We are proud to be working across the industry to develop new capabilities and advancements on LTE. We plan to introduce a full portfolio of Ericsson Radio System for CBRS band across macro, micro and in-building segments, starting with the Radio Dot, to serve our customers’ needs holistically.
