Qualcomm and Samsung achieve world-first simultaneous 5G carrier aggregation for FDD spectrum

Qualcomm, in collaboration with Samsung, announced that the companies have successfully executed the world’s first simultaneous 5G 2x uplink and 4x downlink carrier aggregation (CA) for FDD spectrum. This achievement underscores the companies’ joint leadership in paving the way for the future of 5G performance and flexibility.

The test was completed using a mobile phone form-factor test device powered by the Snapdragon X75 5G Modem-RF System and Samsung’s 5G dual-band and tri-band radios supporting advanced carrier aggregation technology.

The demand for increased uplink capacity has grown due to more consumers using increasingly higher uplink-heavy applications such as video uploads, video conferencing, social media sharing and cloud applications. This achievement increases flexibility for operators with fragmented FDD spectrum assets, bringing faster upload speeds to more consumers across a multitude of markets and networks. Previously, uplink CA has been accomplished with combining FDD+TDD or TDD+TDD configurations.

This accomplishment is the latest milestone to deliver on the promise of  Snapdragon X75 to bring faster 5G to more users around the world.

“Our sixth generation modem-to-antenna solution was designed to future-ready 5G launches globally and bring numerous world’s first connectivity features to support the wide range of consumer and enterprise use cases,” said Sunil Patil, vice president, product management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “We are pleased to further solidify our collaboration with Samsung to continue to set the pace for innovation and enable new experiences for users.”

“This achievement represents Samsung and Qualcomm Technologies’ ongoing efforts in pushing the boundaries of what is possible with mobile technology,” said Ji-Yun Seol, Vice President, Head of Product Strategy, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “Samsung has been leading the way in unleashing the full power of 5G technology to meet increasing customer demands. We will continue to advance network capabilities at the highest level.”

Snapdragon X75 is currently sampling to customers, with commercial devices expected to launch in the second half of 2023.

Also Read: BMW & Qualcomm: Pioneering Next-Gen Vehicles with Snapdragon Digital Chassis Tech