Even if licensed spectrum remains the foundation for mobile operator capacity planning, unlicensed spectrum is hugely important, first in the form of Wi-Fi offload, but also now in the form of spectrum aggregation, the ability to use both licensed and unlicensed spectrum as a single capacity resource.
Carrier aggregation first was developed to support 4G operations, especially the ability to combine spectrum from disparate frequency bands.
As used to support 5G, the more compelling use case is the ability to take advantage of unlicensed spectrum as though it were part of the carrier’s licensed spectrum inventory.
The advantages are several. First, there is quite a lot of unlicensed spectrum to aggregate, shown as the blue bars in the illustration, especially in the 5 GHz to 7 GHz ranges.
Unlicensed spectrum also does not have direct spectrum licensing costs, so offers significant additional capacity without licensed spectrum capital investment.
Also, unlicensed spectrum in the 5 GHz to 7 GHz region has coverage characteristics similar to other mid-band spectrum. That means radio placement often overlaps other existing mid-band resources. That, in turn, means less investment in new tower or radio sites.
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