Ericsson, working with Russian mobile operator MTS and technology company Qualcomm, announced it has trialled Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) technology in a first live over-the-air demonstration in Russia, marking the first time a commercial Ericsson product has been used to support Rel-13 LAA.
Ericsson noted that LAA leverages the 5 GHz unlicensed spectrum band together with licensed spectrum to deliver enhanced performance for mobile device users. Together with MTS, the largest mobile operator in Russia and the CIS serving over 100 million subscribers, and Qualcomm Technologies, Ericsson conducted the live trial based on a commercial small cell product for Rel-13 LAA.
The demonstration was conducted in an MTS test lab over a live network and involved Ericsson's Pico RBS 6402 small cell and a Qualcomm Snapdragon X16 LTE mobile test device.
Ericsson's RBS 6402 is an indoor pico cell designed for small building deployments that offers support for LTE, WCDMA and WiFi, 10 frequency bands and up to 300 Mbit/s with LTE carrier aggregation.
* Previously, in June last year the two companies tested LTE-U (LTE-Unlicensed) and demonstrated the aggregation of two frequency bands - 10 MHz in the 1800 MHz band of LTE and 20 MHz in the unlicensed 5 GHz band - at WiFi access points, achieving data rates of up to 200 Mbit/s.
* Earlier this year, MTS, and Ericsson announced trials of 5G technology during which they achieved data transmission rates of up to 25 Gbit/s using a portable prototype of a smartphone. The testing was conducted by Ericsson and MTS at the Opening Arena stadium in Moscow, where a base station operating in the range of 14.5 to 15.3 GHz transmitted a signal to a portable prototype of a subscriber' device at the speeds of up to 25 Gbit/s.
* The trials were conducted as part of its strategic partnership between Ericsson and MTS established in December 2015. Under the agreement, Ericsson and MTS plan to cooperate on 5G R&D in Russia, encompassing areas including spectrum studies of the next generation network and implementation of a test system.
