Qualcomm Makes World's First MulteFire Over-the-Air Connection

SAN DIEGO, Oct. 17, 2016

"This OTA test is an important step forward in the development and commercialization of MulteFire technology," said Matt Grob, executive vice president and chief technology officer, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. "It is also an important stepping stone towards furthering 5G shared spectrum technologies, as 5G New Radio (5G NR) is being designed to support licensed, unlicensed and shared spectrum types."

MulteFire is based on 3GPP standards, specifically Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) in Release 13 for downlink and enhanced Licensed Assisted Access (eLAA) in Release 14 for uplink. Similar to LAA and eLAA, MulteFire is inherently designed to share the unlicensed spectrum fairly with Wi-Fi and other technologies by using the LBT standard. Leveraging LTE technology in unlicensed spectrum brings enhanced performance to MulteFire users that will experience better capacity, improved coverage and seamless mobility. Neighboring Wi-Fi users will also experience improved performance compared to having Wi-Fi as a neighbor, which we also have demonstrated for LAA that uses the same LBT coexistence mechanism as MulteFire. MulteFire is applicable to any spectrum that benefits from over-the-air sharing using LBT, both unlicensed (e.g., 5 GHz) and shared spectrum (e.g., 3.5 GHz CBRS in the United States). As it does not require an anchor in licensed spectrum, MulteFire opens the doors to any operator, enterprise or IoT vertical to take advantage of the LTE family of technologies.  

Last year the MulteFire Alliance was formed with Qualcomm Incorporated as one of the founding members. The MulteFire Alliance is an international association dedicated to developing global technical specifications for MulteFire and establishing a product certification program. The organization also aims to promote a global ecosystem for MulteFire.  The Alliance expects to deliver its Release 1.0 specification in the coming months—demonstrating the significant industry support and momentum behind MulteFire technology.

For more information on MulteFire technology, please click here.

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Qualcomm Incorporated (NASDAQ: QCOM) is a world leader in 3G, 4G and next-generation wireless technologies. Qualcomm Incorporated includes Qualcomm's licensing business, QTL, and the vast majority of its patent portfolio. Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, operates, along with its subsidiaries, substantially all of Qualcomm's engineering, research and development functions, and substantially all of its products and services businesses, including its semiconductor business, QCT. For more than 30 years, Qualcomm ideas and inventions have driven the evolution of digital communications, linking people everywhere more closely to information, entertainment and each other. For more information, visit Qualcomm's website, OnQ blog, Twitter and Facebook pages.

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Email:  corpcomm@qualcomm.com