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4G Americas has released a new whitepaper that sheds light on the methods utilised by the mobile broadband industry to used unlicensed spectrum in order to boost connectivity for consumers and the enterprise.

Standardisation organisations have also played a role in the development of the examined methods – LWA, LAA, LTE-U, among others.

4G Americas president Chris Pearson said: “4G Americas believes that identifying and auctioning exclusive use licensed spectrum should be a priority for countries throughout the Americas region. However, licensed, shared and unlicensed spectrum will all need to be efficiently utilised.”

LTE-WLAN Aggregation (LWA) involves the use of an Evolved NodeB to schedule the service of packets on LTE and WiFi radio links, allowing for the optimal utilisation of resources on both links while boosting aggregate user throughput.

License Assisted Access (LAA) concerns the use of deployment of LTE itself in unlicensed spectrum, allowing operators and vendors to take advantage of existing or planned investments in LTE/Evolved Packet Core (EPC) hardware at both the radio and core network while streamlining User Equipment (UE) architecture.

Meanwhile, the LTE-U Forum has released specifications and studies for minimum base station and UE requirements and co-existence with WiFi that related to LTE Unlicensed (LTE-U), another approach that utilises LTE in unlicensed spectrum.

Finally, the whitepaper elaborates on other, emerging alternatives to multi-connectivity/aggregation such as Multipath Transmission Control Protocol (MP-TCP) and QuickUser Datagram Protocol Internet Connections (QUIC).

Pearson added: “The option of smartly integrating unlicensed spectrum provides a possible solution for a seamless and spectrally proficient method of offloading while using the same core radio technology across both licensed and unlicensed spectrum.”

You can find the whitepaper here.