Unpaired Spectrum

Paired and unpaired Spectrum

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In the auctions for mobile frequency most of the spectrum sales have been for paired spectrum.that means the uplink and downlink work in pairs. One downside of this is that usually there is much more traffic to a mobile via downlink rather than the uplink. Additionally, as part of the auctions unpaired spectrum was sold.

How is unpaired spectrum used? We cannot use the same methods as with paired spectrum as the same channel has to be used for up and down links. The transmissions on unpaired channels is via TDD. This actually balances the up and down links. Time Division Duplex, allows for asymmetrical data communications as the channel is allocated on demand thus an efficient way to use the spectrum.