Do you know the origin of carrier aggregation?

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Do you know the origin of carrier aggregation? [Copy link]

With the popularity of smart phones and the development of mobile Internet, various mobile phones and tablets have an increasingly strong demand for network speed and traffic, even to the point of being hungry for it. So how can we meet the contradiction between people's growing demand for network speed and limited network capacity? There is a technology that can double or even multiply the download speed of 5G. That is "carrier aggregation".

The following is an introduction to the origin of carrier aggregation.

Generally speaking, there are several ideas to improve network speed or capacity:

Build more base stations: This way, fewer people will compete for resources under the same base station, and the network speed will naturally increase. But the disadvantage is that the investment is too large, and operators will definitely not do business at a loss.

Improving spectrum efficiency: From 2G to 5G, many experts have devoted themselves to research and studied, and their hair has turned gray, just to improve efficiency and upload more data per hertz of spectrum! It can be seen that this work is really difficult.

Increasing spectrum bandwidth: This is the simplest and most brutal way to increase capacity. From 2G to 5G, the bandwidth of a single carrier has continued to grow, from 200K in 2G, to 5M in 3G, and 20M in 4G. In the 5G era, it has even reached 100M (Sub6G band) and even 400M (millimeter wave band)!

However, all these efforts are still a drop in the bucket in the face of the surging traffic. What can we do?

The only way is to increase the spectrum bandwidth! The 4G approach is mainly to grab the frequency bands of 2G, 3G, and even Wi-Fi, while the 5G approach is mainly to expand new frequency bands, from traditional low-frequency to high-frequency with larger bandwidth.

We have managed to obtain the spectrum by all means, but the bandwidth of the carrier has been determined by the protocol and cannot be changed. What can we do?

It is easy to implement. Strength in numbers is an eternal truth. If the capacity of one carrier is not enough, I will add another one to transmit data. I don't believe that the speed will not be increased. What? Not enough? Then continue to add carriers!

This technology is called: carrier aggregation.

The first version of LTE was widely promoted as 4G technology due to its limited capacity, but in fact it did not meet the ITU's 4G standard, so the industry called it 3.9G.

Later, when LTE evolved to LTE-Advanced, 5-carrier aggregation was introduced, expanding the bandwidth available to a single user from 20MHz to 100MHz, thus securing its position as the leader in 4G.

The subsequent 5G naturally inherits the mantle of 4G and uses carrier aggregation as a tool to increase capacity.

How about it? Now you know how carrier aggregation came about. If you want to know more, click " Popular Science: Talking about Carrier Aggregation (Part 1) " to learn more detailed knowledge.