4G Americas Carrier Aggregation_FINALv1 0 (2)

4.3 CONTIGUOUS AND NON-CONTIGUOUS INTRA-BAND CAWith the current maximum channel bandwidth in 3GPP limited to 20 MHz in LTE and LTE-Advanced,intra-band CA provides a path to wider bandwidths. Due to the commonality of the frequencies andpropagation characteristics, intra-band CA is primarily used to enhance capacity rather than coverage.Intra-band CA can be contiguous, non-contiguous or a combination of contiguous and non-contiguous.Contiguous CA Bandwidth Classes and Guard BandsContiguous CA combinations are defined in 3GPP TS 36.101 Table 5.6A-1 according to CA bandwidthclasses. [2] The bandwidth class depends on the number of Physical Resource Blocks (PRBs) and thenumber of component carriers. The CA configuration indicates a combination of LTE operating band(s)and CA bandwidth class(es). The CA bandwidth class indicates a combination of maximum ATBC andmaximum number of CCs, where ATBC is the Aggregated Transmission Bandwidth Configuration that isequal to the total number of aggregated PRBs. Guard bands are specifically defined for contiguous CA,based on the widest component carrier in CA configuration.Table 2 presents the CA bandwidth classes and corresponding nominal guard bands.[2] As can be noted,a maximum of three CC’s is already available, while a usage of four CCs is expected to be available infuture releases after further study.CABandwidthClassTable 2. CA Bandwidth Classes and Corresponding Nominal Guard Bands.Aggregated TransmissionBandwidth ConfigurationNumber ofcontiguousCCNominal Guard Band BW GBA N RB,agg ≤ 100 1 a 1 BW Channel(1) - 1 (NOTE 2)B 25 < N RB,agg ≤ 100 2 0.05 max(BW Channel(1),BW Channel(2))- 1C 100 < N RB,agg ≤ 200 2 0.05 max(BW Channel(1),BW Channel(2)) -D 200 < N RB,agg ≤ 300 3 0.05 max(BW Channel(1),BW Channel(2),BW Channel(3)) - 0.5 f 1E [300] < N RB,agg ≤ [400] For FurtherFFSStudy (FFS)F [400] < N RB,agg ≤ [500] FFS FFSNOTE 1: BW Channel(j), j = 1, 2, 3, is the channel bandwidth of an E-UTRA component carrier according toTable 5.6- 1 1 = 0 for theuplink.NOTE 2: a 1 = 0.16/1.4 for BW Channel(1) = 1.4 MHz whereas a 1 = 0.05 for all other channel bandwidths.Channel Spacing in Intra-Band CAChannel spacing between two or more adjacent contiguous aggregated carriers is defined by equation 1.BW 0.1BWChannel(1)Channel(2)Channel(1)Channel(2)Eq 1. Nominal channel spacing 0.3MHz BW0.6 BW14G Americas LTE Carrier Aggregation October 2014 13