Aricent accelerates the availability of up and coming Wi-Fi technology co-existence standards that improve the user experience and deliver significant cost and time-to-market advantages.
Aricent today announced the immediate availability of LTE Licensed 
Assisted Access (LAA) and LTE Wi-Fi Aggregation (LWA) solutions for LTE eNodeB as part of the company’s commitment to provide comprehensive next-generation connectivity solutions to its customers.
The alternative spectrum technology solutions incorporate Aricent’s LTE eNodeB software running on hardware partner’s SoC platform. Leveraging the existing carrier aggregation capabilities, the Aricent LTE-LAA solution uses one or more 20 MHz carrier(s) in license-exempt spectrum, which can be cost effectively shared with Wi-Fi for opportunistic access to increase the traffic capacity of an in-building LTE network. The Aricent LWA solution combines LTE and Wi-Fi technology to provide a unified wireless network to user devices. Together, these solutions deliver significant cost and time-to-market advantages for both OEMs and service providers that seek to launch new and compelling in-building communications capabilities.
The Aricent LTE-LAA solution is available for customers to incorporate into their product development plans. It is designed for fair coexistence of LTE and Wi-Fi by using the Listen-Before-Talk (LBT) protocol with back-off approach on the license-exempt secondary carrier currently used mainly for Wi-Fi. The Dynamic Frequency Selection (DFS) mechanism is built into the solution to address the requirements of operating in specific unlicensed frequency bands. This solution is ideally suited for small-cell deployments where low-power and high-frequency reuse is critical to meet increased capacity requirements, and the 5 GHz license-exempt band is seen as the right fit for the same.
“We are continuing to collaborate with Aricent in developing our next-generation Wireless Access solutions supporting 4.5G with capabilities such as LTE-LAA,” said Jee-wong Chung, Chief Technology Officer, Contela Inc. “We are confident that Aricent will be able keep pace with the quick evolution of 3GPP standards beyond Release 13 and ensure readiness of its software, which reduces overall time to market for us.”
“We are excited to introduce the LTE-LAA and LWA solutions that quickly and cost-effectively address the high-end throughput needs of enterprise and residential users in the in-building environment,” said Walid Negm, Chief Technology Officer, Aricent. “Contela has once again shown its confidence in our eNodeB software. With more than 80 LTE engagements to date with equipment manufacturers, Aricent has developed the expertise and experience to deliver next-generation connectivity capabilities in the LTE RAN space.”
Aricent’s LWA solution is designed to offload LTE traffic onto the Wi-Fi infrastructure in a seamless manner for compatible user devices and provide significant improvement in the end-user experience.
