Aeroflex says its 7100 digital radio test set now has support for carrier aggregation as used in wideband LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) mobile networks.
Carrier aggregation allows multiple radio carriers to be added together, allowing wider channel bandwidths and higher data rates to be achieved.
The 7100 test set supports all of the carrier aggregation scenarios specified in 3GPP Release 10, and is also ready for all those currently proposed for Release 11, as well as any other combination of two non-contiguous bands.
By combining two non-contiguous carriers, each with 20MHz bandwidth, a downlink data rate of 300Mbit/s can potentially be achieved using 2x2 MIMO and 64QAM, meeting the requirements of CAT 6.
Potentially, LTE-A has provision for combining up to five component carriers (CC) of up to 20MHz bandwidth, with the aim of raising the peak data rate to 1Gbit/s and beyond.
3GPP Release 10 specifies 11 TDD bands, along with a range of scenarios for aggregating specific pairs of these bands in both contiguous and non-contiguous combinations.
Aeroflex's end-to-end carrier aggregation test capability is being demonstrated at Mobile World Congress using a 7100 digital radio test set in combination with the TM500 Test Mobile, which is emulating a real LTE-A mobile user equipment.
Source:
http://www.electronicsweekly.com/Articles/2013/02/25/55637/mwc-aeroflex-adds-lte-a-support-to-7100-test-set.htm
