Airtel and Ericsson Conduct India’s First LAA Trial in a Live Network
Bharti Airtel, India’s leading telecommunications services provider, and Ericsson have successfully conducted India’s first trial of Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) technology over a LIVE LTE network.
LAA is a key technology as operators evolve their networks to achieve Gigabit LTE by opening up previously untapped resources of unlicensed spectrum delivering speeds once thought only possible over fiber.
LAA enables the use of unlicensed spectrum in the 5 GHz band in combination with the licensed spectrum. With this, the subscribers get a massively enhanced mobile broadband experience and ultra-fast speeds while, operators make efficient use of unlicensed spectrum resources.
During the trial, data download speeds of over 500 Mbps were recorded on smartphones in an indoor environment. In outdoor environment, peak download speed of more than 400Mbps was achieved with coverage of about 180 meters from the base station. The trial was conducted in Delhi-NCR.
Airtel used one LTE 5 MHz carrier aggregated with three 20 MHz carriers of unlicensed spectrum. Together with 4CC carrier aggregation, 4x4 MIMO and 256 QAM technologies, the trial was conducted using Ericsson Radio System.
