Ericsson and partners showcase first-of-its-kind CBRS demonstration

In a US-industry first, Verizon, Ericsson, Qualcomm Technologies – a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated – and Federated Wireless have announced the first ever use of CBRS (Citizens Broadband Radio Service) band 48 spectrum in an LTE Advanced carrier aggregation demonstration. The news follows other recent announcements of industry leadership from Qualcomm, Ericsson and Verizon including successfully reaching speeds over 1Gbps on LTE.

The CBRS band is made up of 150 MHz of 3.5 GHz shared spectrum which until now has been primarily used by the federal government for radar systems. The FCC has authorized shared use of the band with wireless small cells. Using the LTE Advanced feature of carrier aggregation, Verizon, Ericsson, Qualcomm Technologies and Federated Wireless were able to demonstrate LTE with carrier aggregation on this band and carry wireless traffic.  Federated Wireless provided the Spectrum Access System to dynamically prioritize traffic within the FCC’s spectrum sharing framework for this band.

“The use of CBRS spectrum greatly advances our work in emerging spectrum bands.  Verizon and our partners are leading the way in creating an ecosystem around the use of CBRS spectrum which will lead to greater capacity and speed for our customers,” said Nicola Palmer, Wireless Chief Network Officer for Verizon. “As industry leaders we work tirelessly to provide the best mobile experience available – that includes always innovating through new technologies and software platforms to better serve our customers.”

Nishant Batra, Vice President and Head of Product Area Network Infrastructure, Ericsson says, “Ericsson has been a leader in pioneering technologies; by leveraging CBRS spectrum enabling additional LTE carrier aggregation, we continue to lead the way to meet customers speed and capacity demands. We are proud to be working across the industry to develop new capabilities and advancements on LTE.  We plan to introduce a full portfolio of Ericsson Radio System for CBRS band across macro, micro and in-building segments, starting with the Radio Dot, to serve our customers’ needs holistically.”

The demo, set in an Ericsson lab in Plano, TX included the end-to-end CBRS communication flow, using 2×20 MHz LTE carriers on the CBRS band 48, and employing a 256 QAM modulation in the downlink.  Ericsson provided the band 48 Radio Dot System and Domain Proxy for communication with Federated SAS.  Qualcomm Technologies provided a Qualcomm^® Snapdragon^TM LTE modem test device, and Federated Wireless provided the spectrum management service with their Spectrum Controller.

“We are excited to demonstrate the support for new types of spectrum in Snapdragon LTE modems,” said Joe Glynn, Vice President, Business Development at Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “The use of LTE Advanced with carrier aggregation will help enable the use of new CBRS shared spectrum to offer higher network capacity, and ultimately, higher speed to users than currently available.”

“This end-to-end CBRS deployment is an exciting milestone,” said Iyad Tarazi, CEO at Federated Wireless. “The CBRS ecosystem has truly reached full commercial viability, and Verizon will soon be able to enhance its customers’ experience with this latest wireless network innovation.”

A full, live demo will be available for viewing at the upcoming Mobile World Congress Americas in California in mid September.