Written by Andrew Wooden
Kit vendor Ericsson has combined six component carriers to clock a 5G download speed of 5.7Gbps, which it says is a record.
The data call was achieved in an Ericsson lab using (brace yourselves) three FDD (frequency division duplex) bands combined with three TDD (time division duplex) bands in sub-6GHz, Ericsson RAN Compute hardware, carrier aggregation software, and something called Advanced RAN Coordination functionality.
By combining FDD spectrum with TDD spectrum, more users can benefit from carrier aggregation gains, we’re told. In total 400MHz of bandwidth was aggregated with FDD bandwidths ranging 20MHz to 50MHz to clock the 5.7Gbps throughput.
What’s the point of six-component carrier capability? It allows operators to optimise their use of network and spectrum assets and deliver higher data speeds and capacity that can help downlink-heavy applications, we’re told. ‘This can mean better audio and video quality for streaming users, faster file downloads, and a better working environment for digital nomads,’ explains the release. Better 5G is another way of putting it.
