Nokia and SK Telecom demonstrate close to 4 Gbps LTE throughput using TDD-FDD carrier aggregation

Nokia, a global telecom equipment provider and SK Telecom, a South Korean wireless telecom operator have again demonstrated the benefits of converging the TDD and FDD LTE spectrum. By aggregating 10 spectrum frequencies allocated for both LTE variants for a massive 200 MHz of bandwidth, Nokia and SK Telecom reached a throughput speed of 3.78 Gbps. At this speed, a mobile broadband user can download a full-length 5 GB high-definition (HD) movie in just 11 seconds.

“This significant throughput achievement builds on our long-term collaboration with Nokia to make the most of TDD-FDD converged technologies. It is also a proofpoint of our continued leadership in providing the fastest connections and the highest quality for subscribers who use advanced data services,” said Alex Jinsung Choi, Executive Vice President and Head of ICT R&D Division at SK Telecom. “Once again, SK Telecom and Nokia have set a benchmark for the global telecoms industry.”

“This amazing speed record shows that Nokia continues to maintain its position as a clear throughput leader in the TD-LTE arena”, said Zhang Qi, vice president of TD-LTE at Nokia. “Operators worldwide can be confident in our capability to tackle the increasing demands for not only faster download but also data upload speeds.”

The unmatched throughput was achieved with Nokia’s Single RAN solution including the high-capacity Flexi Multiradio 10 Base Station, enhanced with software to aggregate carriers on both TDD and FDD LTE spectrum and to implement LTE-Advanced Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) technology. With this demonstration, Nokia and SK Telecom have pushed the boundaries of carrier aggregation by successfully achieving twice the amount of carriers and bandwidth specified by 3GPP, which foresees the aggregation of 5 carriers up to a total bandwidth of 100 MHz.

There are significant benefits for operators in all geographical regions in combining their TDD and FDD LTE spectrum resources, one being the increased capacity for downlink and uplink data-intensive applications such as video streaming – and also the ability to eliminate supplementary downlink (SDL) completely. Nokia has deployed a number of TDD-FDD networks and is working closely with 3GPP and several operators to make TDD-FDD convergent networks a commercial reality to match and exceed the expectations of the most demanding mobile users.