Carrier aggregation promises to open new possibilities to LTE network operators

One commercial that made me chuckle in the mid-1990s was a Pizza Hut spot featuring Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and future Hall-of-Famer Deion Sanders, who had just signed a free-agent deal to play for the Cowboys just days after finishing the baseball season with the Cincinnati Reds.

In the commercial depicting a faux conversation before the signing, Jones asks if Sanders wants to play baseball or football. Sanders replies, “Both, boss.” Jones then asks if Sanders wants to play offense or defense. Sanders replies, “Both.”

Finally, Jones asks, “So, what’ll it be, Deion [to sign you]? $15, $20 million?” Sanders again replies, “Both.”

Indeed, Sanders signed for $35 million for seven years, which was a groundbreaking contract at the time. And the role that Sanders played for the Cowboys also was groundbreaking, as he started at both cornerback and wide receiver for several years.

In wireless communications, there has not been as much flexibility as Sanders displayed. Network operators traditionally have learned to live with limitations dictated largely by the physics associated with the spectrum they use. Airwaves at lower frequencies are extremely scarce, but the signals propagate well, meaning fewer sites are needed to cover a given area. Meanwhile, spectrum tends to be more plentiful in higher bands, but the weaker propagation characteristics force an operator to deploy more sites to realize the same coverage.

For most of radio’s history, devices could access only a single channel at time in a given band. During the past decade, technology has evolved to the point where multiband radios have become commonplace, but they only allow access to one spectrum band at a time—a choice has to be made, whether it is done consciously by the user or automatically via software within the radio.

But that promises to change soon, as wireless operators implementing LTE-Advanced will not have to make a choice regarding which spectrum to use at a given instance. Instead, like Deion Sanders, they will be able to say, “Both.”