BT Group-owned UK cellco EE and Swedish vendor partner Ericsson have claimed a European first with the demonstration of 5G service transmission via a wideband FDD carrier (over 20MHz) within a sub-3GHz spectrum band. A press release declared that enabling 5G to be expanded in FDD bands is an important step in paving the way for the arrival of EE’s 5G Standalone (5G SA) mobile network. 5G SA will in future enable superior experiences for consumers and businesses – meeting the growing demand for data, driven by the likes of cloud gaming, VR, and emerging edge technologies.

The trial demonstrated the benefits of configuring a wide carrier bandwidth of 50MHz (50MHz downlink plus 50MHz uplink) in EE’s 2.6GHz band and performing downlink aggregation with two TDD carriers in EE’s 3.5GHz band. The trial also evaluated an intermediate carrier bandwidth of 30MHz.

Conducted on EE’s live network in Bristol and Potters Bar using existing Ericsson commercial hardware (Baseband 6648, Radio 4419) and by activating the software feature ‘Large Bandwidth Support Low-Band’, testing with MediaTek Dimensity powered handsets with integrated MediaTek M80 Release-16 modem, the trial showed a capacity uplift of more than three times with a single FDD carrier. This is particularly significant for the uplink in 5G SA, which is currently based on a single carrier.