What is HSPA+LTE Carrier Aggregation?

The idea of aggregating multiple carriers to increase performance is included in both LTE and HSPA. A
logical step to fully leverage existing HSPA deployments and future LTE deployments is to aggregate the capacity of both systems and tie
them together into a single mobile system.

HSPA+LTE aggregation allows for transmitting data to one user simultaneously using both the HSPA
and the LTE radios for maximal utilization of the available spectrum and the deployed equipment. This is
considered beneficial especially in the environment where the spectrum that needs to be shared between
the two radio access technologies is not abundant, and the deployed HSPA and LTE capacities and user
data rates suffer from spectrum crunch.

One example of such deployment is the 900 MHz for HSPA and the 800 MHz for LTE which are both seen attractive bands for building the coverage due to the low frequency but also suffer from very limited spectrum availability. With aggregation of the two bands it is possible to provide the high data rates expected from the LTE services while at the same time maintain coverage for the HSPA devices.

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