Orange and Ericsson have completed the world’s first live LTE-advanced feature-driven development (FDD) trial in the 3.4 – 3.6 GHz band in Bordeaux.

The live trial was authorized by the French regulator ARCEP and was carried on in October to November last year, on Orange’s network in Bordeaux using Ericsson’s pre-commercial equipment.

The second phase was carried out on Orange’s live mobile network and was based on Ericsson’s pre-commercial FDD 3.5 GHz radio base station equipment.

For the trial, new antennas supporting the 3.5 GHz band were installed at the Le Ponant and Meriadeck sites in the city center of Bordeaux.

A range of streaming-based services were tested allowing the team to continuously monitor network performance between the base station and the mobile prototype throughout the live trial.

The data throughputs acquired during the tests were measured, both before and after carrier aggregation of the two bands. A peak performance of 150 Mbps at a distance of up to 700 meters was achieved in the 3.5 GHz band when used alone, and speeds of 300 Mbps was attained when used in aggregation with the 2.6 GHz band.

Alain Maloberti, senior vice president, Orange Labs Networks, said: “This live FDD trial demonstrated that the 3.5 GHz band can be successfully used in urban and suburban environments in stand-alone mode or in aggregation with another band to provide advanced mobile broadband services using a FDD access scheme for high peak data rate applications to enhance user experience.”

The project has provided an opportunity to gather essential experience on the ways future multi-frequency networks could be optimized from cost and performance perspectives.

Thomas Noren, vice president, head of radio product management, said: “This live FDD trial also demonstrated that the macro coverage of 3.5 GHz spectrum is suitable for providing substantial capacity gains that can satisfy future consumer needs.”

The successful trial’s results re-confirmed that the FDD access scheme is a promising solution for the 3.5GHz band to provide mobile operators additional capacity for advanced services and applications in Europe. – TradeArabia News Service