Carrier Aggregation (CA) and Dual Connectivity (EN-DC, NR-DC)

CA: MAC-Level Aggregation

Carrier Aggregation and Dual Connectivity are the two primary techniques for combining multiple carriers to boost throughput beyond what a single carrier can deliver. CA combines multiple component carriers at the MAC layer within a single gNB. NR supports up to 16 CCs, with types including intra-band contiguous (adjacent carriers on the same band, e.g., two 50 MHz on n78), intra-band non-contiguous (same band but separated), and inter-band (different bands like n78 plus n257). The primary CC carries control channels while secondary CCs (SCells) are activated and deactivated dynamically based…