MWC: Test firms run 1Gbit/s downloads on 4G LTE-A device

Gigabit per second mobile download speeds will become a reality before the roll-out of 5G services. 4G LTE-A mobile data downloads of 1Gbit/s are being demonstrated on a commercial modem device for the first time at Mobile World Congress this week.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X16 LTE modem has been put through its paces by two test firms Keysight Technologies and Anritsu at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The expectation that 5G with 1GHz channel bandwidth will be able to support these download rates and higher on a single channel. For LTE-A to achieve this with its 20MHz channel bandwidth, multiple carrier channels are used in what is called carrier aggregation.

Mobile World Congress: Your Electronics Weekly guide »

Both test set-ups used three carriers with 256QAM modulation and 4×4 MIMO.

Keysight used its E7515A UXM wireless test set demonstrating LTE-A Pro with a data throughput of 1Gbit/s using three carriers – 4×4 and 2×2 downlink MIMO and 256QAM modulation.

Keysight also demonstrated the UXM providing 1.6Gbit/s using 4CC carrier aggregation and 4×4 MIMO.

Anritsu used its MD8430A LTE Simulator demonstrating 1Gbit/s throughput for an LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) device and network simulator using 3x Carrier Aggregation (3CA) and 4×4 MIMO with 256QAM modulation.