LTE gets faster. Much faster.

Ericsson, one of the biggest proponents of mobile broadband in general, and LTE in particular has demoed a new variant of the technology called LTE Advanced which is ten times faster than todays commercial LTE networks. Ericsson, showed off LTE Advanced using commercial hardware in Kista Sweden for the Swedish Post and Telecom Agency (PTS.)

The system, based on commercial hardware, was operating on a test frequency provided by the PTS. This enabled Ericsson to demonstrate LTE Advanced functionality such as carrier aggregation of 3 x 20MHz (60MHz aggregated) over the air in a mobile environment for the first time.

The demo system was based on Ericssons multi-mode, multi-standard radio base station, RBS 6000. Live traffic was streamed between the RBS and a moving van from which network performance could be monitored. In the demonstration, 60MHz of aggregated bandwidth was used, compared to the 20MHz maximum that is currently possible using LTE. In the downlink, 88 MIMO was used. (Ericsson)

Ericsson isnt the first one to show off LTE Advanced.Other carriers and hardware makersare showing offnetworks with speeds of up to 1 Gbps. Ericsson, however, says thatthe sales of this gear will start in 2013, so theoretically, our current LTE network speeds could get a massive bump in a couple of years, provided we get gobs of spectrum (60 GHz is six times what todays operators are using) and all new equipment on both the base station and the devic! e side t o support MIMO. Of course, I know that is wishful thinking but dont blame me for getting excited about the idea of finallyhaving the real 4G networks.

If you want to know more about LTE Advanced, then check out10 Things You Need to Know About LTE-Advanced by Stacey Higginbotham.

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