Ericsson and Qualcomm, recently joint hands to complete LTE-Unlicensed (LTE-U) live demonstration, combining licensed and unlicensed 5 GHz spectrum band over the air to deliver a peak throughput of up to 300 Mbps. In the demonstration which took place at the PT/Expo Comm China 2015, the companies combined one 20 MHz licensed component carrier (CC) with one 20 MHz CC running on 5 GHz unlicensed spectrum.
The demonstration used second-generation indoor picocell base station RBS 6402, with multi-standard, multi-band capabilities and Wi-Fi support and a Qualcomm® Snapdragon 820 processor with X12 LTE designed to efficiently combine licensed and unlicensed spectrum.
LTE-U enables carrier aggregation of licensed with unlicensed bands to effectively address growth in indoor data traffic. The technology is expected to be available in Ericsson's small cell portfolio starting in the fourth quarter of 2015.