Vodafone Portugal has become the first operator to launch FDD/TDD commercially in its network, ahead of wider device availability this year.
The operator worked with Ericsson and Qualcomm on the project, with the infrastructure vendor supplying its software release 15B and the chipset maker its Snapdragon 810 processor with 10x LTE.
Vodafone Portugal said the rollout would “significantly” enhance its downlink data performance and wider customer experience. By aggregating FDD and TDD, Ericsson said app coverage of the TDD layer would be increased by as much as 230 percent.
The operator has deployed carrier aggregation by using 15MHz of FDD 1800MHz and 20MHZ of TDD 2600MHz. The rollout of the technology follows testing between Ericsson and Qualcomm last year.
Per Narvinger, Head of LTE at Ericsson, said: “Combining TDD with low-band FDD spectrum will improve the high-band TDD coverage area, and the TDD spectrum will significantly improve the overall downlink throughput. With global availability of TDD spectrum, we regard FDD/TDD carrier aggregation as a key technology to further improve user experience for customers worldwide.”