Chapter 11 - Multi-Carrier Operation

Abstract

One of the distinctive features of the 4th generation of cellular systems is the ability to operate at extremely large bandwidths. The RF spectrum utilized for such large bandwidth operation may comprise contiguous or noncontiguous bands (virtual wideband operation). The component carriers corresponding to each frequency band can be assigned to unicast and/or multicast and broadcast services. The multicarrier operation enables control and operation of a number of contiguous or noncontiguous component carriers (several physical layers) using a single MAC instantiation. In FDD mode, each downlink or uplink frequency channel is individually referred to as a component carrier and is assigned a distinct physical carrier index, whereas in TDD mode each frequency channel with downlink and uplink partitions is designated as a component carrier and is assigned a distinct physical carrier index. The physical carrier index is an identifier for all available component carriers across the entire network. The mobile station is not required to support multicarrier operation in certain device classes.