SK Telecom and Qualcomm announced on the 29th that they have successfully demonstrated Enhanced Licensed Assisted Access (eLAA) that utilizes both licensed and unlicensed spectrum at SK Telecom’s Corporate R&D Center in Bundang, Korea.

eLAA technology increases data speeds in both uplink and downlink by aggregating licensed and unlicensed spectrum to create a wider data pipe in both directions. The demo uses 2.6GHz licensed spectrum and 5GHz unlicensed spectrum.

When evaluating coexistence, a baseline was first established using only Wi-Fi users, of which some were then switched from Wi-Fi to eLAA while others remained on Wi-Fi. The trial demonstrated that the users that remained on Wi-Fi were unaffected by those that switched to eLAA. This effectively demonstrates that eLAA shares the unlicensed spectrum fairly with Wi-Fi. The sharing mechanism used by eLAA is called listen-before-talk (LBT). As for performance, eLAA was shown in multiple test cases to achieve 2X capacity in 5 GHz than the Wi-Fi only baseline.

In June 2015, SK Telecom launched “Band LTE Wi-Fi” service based on Multi-Path Transmission Control Protocol (MPTCP) technology that combines LTE and Wi-Fi traffic to enable downlink rates up to 1.17Gbps. This means that SK Telecom can now choose from two available technologies to combine unlicensed spectrum with existing LTE spectrum, eLAA and MPTCP.

In addition to MPTCP and eLAA, which use unlicensed spectrum in hotspots, SK Telecom is also concentrating on further LTE-Advanced Pro technology development based on new frequency bands to deliver faster data rate than competitors while mobile with wider coverage areas.

Eduardo Esteves, vice president, product management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. said, “This trial aims to demonstrate fair and harmonious coexistence of eLAA with Wi-Fi in unlicensed spectrum. This is also a manifestation of Qualcomm Technologies’ and SK Telecom’s leadership in leveraging the latest technologies to improve user experience.”

Jin Hyo Park, head of network technology at SK Telecom said, “A flexible combination between licensed and unlicensed spectrum is necessary to enable high quality massive 5G service.” He added, “We will lead the network innovation towards LTE-A Pro and 5G including combining licensed and unlicensed spectrum technologies such as eLAA and MPTCP.”