No Carrier Aggregation - Sierra Wireless EM7565

[Prvt.N00b]

I own a Galaxy Note 8, and using this command *#0011# I can see my cellphone can get CA with B2 and B28, and if I move a few steps to a park near where I live, I can get LTE+ with CA B4 and B28, all this using my cellphone. However my router is a WE826-T2 and it only sees every bands here(2, 4 & 28) individually, but it never shows any sign of Carrie Agreggation nor LTE+.

my setup is WE826-T2 and a Wireless Sierra EM7565

any Troubleshooting steps that can help me understand what is going on?

AT!GSTATUS?
!GSTATUS:
Current Time: 4273 Temperature: 56
Reset Counter: 2 Mode: ONLINE
System mode: LTE PS state: Attached
LTE band: B28 LTE bw: 10 MHz
LTE Rx chan: 9410 LTE Tx chan: 27410
LTE SSC1 state:NOT ASSIGNED
LTE SSC2 state:NOT ASSIGNED
LTE SSC3 state:NOT ASSIGNED
LTE SSC4 state:NOT ASSIGNED
EMM state: Registered Normal Service
RRC state: RRC Connected
IMS reg state: No Srv

PCC RxM RSSI: -67 PCC RxM RSRP: -99
PCC RxD RSSI: -67 PCC RxD RSRP: -100
Tx Power: -- TAC: 17de (6110)
RSRQ (dB): -13.8 Cell ID: 061fa20b (102736395)
SINR (dB): 1.8


OK

Thanks.

[Prvt.N00b]

I found today that my cellphone has better reception than this card, I was able to get CA working but the signal quality has to be very, very good.

[Didneywhorl]

Your Note 8 has a category 16 4x4 MIMO 4xCA 256QAM modem in it, and the phones quad antennas are amped and tuned. The EM7565 is 2x2 MIMO with 3xCA and is using cheap spike antennas. Your comparing very different hardware.

According to your signal stats you have lots of noise on your signal, though the overall power isnt too bad. to get closer to the phone you'll need to at least get that signal cleaned up and stronger. Might want to add directional outdoor antennas.

That cat 12 sierra modem is capable of over 300Mbps in real world tests, the router can only do about 85Mbps on LAN. With that router you need to test speeds only over LAN, the wifi speeds are terrible.

The thewirelesshaven.com NEXR5GO has better wifi, including 5Ghz wifi. Its wifi speeds are faster than the LAN speeds when maxxing out the speeds of the router.

[Prvt.N00b]

Your Note 8 has a category 16 4x4 MIMO 4xCA 256QAM modem in it, and the phones quad antennas are amped and tuned. The EM7565 is 2x2 MIMO with 3xCA and is using cheap spike antennas. Your comparing very different hardware.

According to your signal stats you have lots of noise on your signal, though the overall power isnt too bad. to get closer to the phone you'll need to at least get that signal cleaned up and stronger. Might want to add directional outdoor antennas.

That cat 12 sierra modem is capable of over 300Mbps in real world tests, the router can only do about 85Mbps on LAN. With that router you need to test speeds only over LAN, the wifi speeds are terrible.

The thewirelesshaven.com NEXR5GO has better wifi, including 5Ghz wifi. Its wifi speeds are faster than the LAN speeds when maxxing out the speeds of the router.

thanks man, it make a lot of sense now.

my goal for this router is to use it in my farm, the signal overthere is very weak even for my cellphone.

I will see if I could sell this one and move for a better hardware then.

once again, thanks

[56387f]

Hello,

I have a question about carrier aggregation for MC7455, may be someone more experienced will shed some light on the following situation:

a)I have the latest GodenOrb + MC7455 in a we826 router;

b) AT!ltecat confirms that MC7455 supports "B2+B4" type of carrier aggregation;

c) I created a group of allowed bands (B2,B4), verified that it works - MC7455 has no way of defining the primary band in the group therefore after watching multiple connections I clearly see that my MC7455 connects to the correct provider using either B2 or B4 bands; Now the modem is allowed to connect only to the select group of bands (B2,B4);

d) I made sure that the carrier aggregation is enabled(AT!ltecat=1);

e) I ran multiple tests (at&t high speed test and speakof.me are two my favorites), making sure that the modem is under heavy load and verified its status with at!gstatus? - I always see that LTE CA State is "NOT ASSIGNED", meaning that CA is not used.

At the same time I get 75-80down/25-35up - the max of 20Mhz band according to
https://www.cellmapper.net/4G-speed

which tells me that I still can get this high speed just by using one 20Mhz band.

So, I am pretty much sure everything has been done correctly on my end.

My question is: Am I right that in this situation it would make sense to assume that I cannot get CA working simply because due to some weird reason this band combination (B2/B4) is not allowed/supported by the carrier itself i.e. there is no a solution to this problem?

PS: Forgot to mention, but may be it can be useful for other MC7455 users: I am getting such high speed/throughput only when use MBIM composition, if I switch to QMI composition then speed goes down to 12-16 down/ 4-8 up. At the same time the latency in MBIM composition almost 50%-80% higher but I don't care much.

[Didneywhorl]

Are you testing over wifi or LAN? The we826 max throughput is about 80-90Mbps from wwan. You wont see higher. I was only able to make an MC7455 get about 105Mbps on Band 41, 20Mhz, during 2xCA in a WG3526P over LAN from wwan.

When I changed to cat 12 modem (Quectel EM12G) I was able to get 300Mbps on the same tower under 3xCA B41.

The gear your using is maxxing out I think.

[56387f]

Are you testing over wifi or LAN?

In this case - LAN

The gear your using is maxxing out I think.

I also think so but that is not what I am curious about. I think that I have programmed the modem correctly but I did not notice that CA was working. And I wonder if the reason can be that I restricted the modem to the usage of only two bands (b2/b4), which are supported by the modem as a _legal_ CA group (I have checked that). So, the modem was programmed correctly, CA does not kick in under heavy load - can it be that CA for B2/B4 is not supported by the tower I am connected to? That's my main question ;-(

[Didneywhorl]

... CA does not kick in under heavy load - can it be that CA for B2/B4 is not supported by the tower I am connected to? That's my main question ;-(

100% yes. It happens, and even can be there one day and gone the next.

[Didneywhorl]

I also generally wouldn't band lock unless you had a very express reason, like the tower you want has that band, and without locking it wont use that tower.

[56387f]

Thanks for the answers Actually I came to the same conclusion, the tower simply does not support B2,B4 aggregation although it has no problem with using them individually.
At some point I noticed that when the band lock is not set then my MC7455 can have CA enabled for B7 (20Mhz)+B7(20Mhz)(this combination looks a bit strange to me but I am not an expert) and B4+B12.

That's interesting that MC7455 supports only one CA group which includes B12: LTEB4 -B4,B5,B12,B13,B29. Therefore, If I manually create a group that includes only bands B4,B12 and lock to it later then CA still works just fine (B4, B12 are used) - i.e. manual band locking without loss of CA is possible and this the the confirmation.

>>I also generally wouldn't band lock unless you had a very express reason, like the tower you want has that band, and >>without locking it wont use that tower.

This is more or less what is happening. I am playing with a SIM which roams. I don't know in advance which provider will be/should be/can be used for roaming, MC7455 start connecting to all available providers, slowly going through all available bands and eventually connects to the one. But while the connection to the tower is set, there is no internet connection (roaming is nothing more than VPN from point A to point B - but to be able to roam you should connect to the "right" provider which supports this kind of roaming).
Either way, after I figured out what provided to use, I started locking the connection to it (in GoldenObr GUI, but it can be also done with an AT command). And after locking to the correct provider I can remove the band lock and see what kinds of CA is available.

Prvt.N00b, I apologize for derailing your topic!!

[Prvt.N00b]

Thanks for the answers Actually I came to the same conclusion, the tower simply does not support B2,B4 aggregation although it has no problem with using them individually.
At some point I noticed that when the band lock is not set then my MC7455 can have CA enabled for B7 (20Mhz)+B7(20Mhz)(this combination looks a bit strange to me but I am not an expert) and B4+B12.

That's interesting that MC7455 supports only one CA group which includes B12: LTEB4 -B4,B5,B12,B13,B29. Therefore, If I manually create a group that includes only bands B4,B12 and lock to it later then CA still works just fine (B4, B12 are used) - i.e. manual band locking without loss of CA is possible and this the the confirmation.

>>I also generally wouldn't band lock unless you had a very express reason, like the tower you want has that band, and >>without locking it wont use that tower.

This is more or less what is happening. I am playing with a SIM which roams. I don't know in advance which provider will be/should be/can be used for roaming, MC7455 start connecting to all available providers, slowly going through all available bands and eventually connects to the one. But while the connection to the tower is set, there is no internet connection (roaming is nothing more than VPN from point A to point B - but to be able to roam you should connect to the "right" provider which supports this kind of roaming).
Either way, after I figured out what provided to use, I started locking the connection to it (in GoldenObr GUI, but it can be also done with an AT command). And after locking to the correct provider I can remove the band lock and see what kinds of CA is available.

Prvt.N00b, I apologize for derailing your topic!!

no problem, I'm also learning...

like I said before, the only way I can get my router to show carrier aggregation working is with a extremely good signal, here a screen shot:

[56387f]

no problem, I'm also learning...

like I said before, the only way I can get my router to show carrier aggregation working is with a extremely good signal, here a screen shot:

I am sorry but could you please be more specific since it sounds a bit ambiguous to me. So it can be either a or b (or both)

a) you don't know other way how to check if CA is used;

b) no matter what you do CA only works in very particular situations ( extremely good signal etc) and you wonder why;


thanks!

[Prvt.N00b]

I am sorry but could you please be more specific since it sounds a bit ambiguous to me. So it can be either a or b (or both)

a) you don't know other way how to check if CA is used;

b) no matter what you do CA only works in very particular situations ( extremely good signal etc) and you wonder why;


thanks!

I was comparing my cellphone with the modem, and as you stated before, both hardware are completely different and my cellphone is amp to catch signal in a very weak environment also it's not intended to use external antenna, where the Modem does require an external antenna and also doesn't match what my notes can do, so to the point, my last post was confirming the fact the even though I'm using my MODEM/Router with the OEM antennas, I can get CA but still doesn't match my cellphone.

[56387f]

I was comparing my cellphone with the modem, and as you stated before, both hardware are completely different and my cellphone is amp to catch signal in a very weak environment also it's not intended to use external antenna, where the

This is true. Some time ago when I bought my first LTE modem I was wondering about the same thing. And this question has been already answered many times - my S10, using CAT20 LTE modem, has much better reception than MC7455 (even with internal antennas), plus if tethering is allowed then it will tether at much higher speed than my LTE modem. I also noticed that in manuals for Sierra Wireless / Quectel they call them modems for M2M (machine to machine) communication

Anyway, this is perfectly ok to use a cell phone as a modem in case if you have a decent signal. I, personally, used many times a mini travel router (GL750S), running OpenWRT with my S10 as usb modem and had (mostly, since heat at summer was the biggest issue, the phone got really hot at times) great experience. In other situation MOFI/WE826 with 75 feet network cable and original (paddle style antennas) allowed me to put the router to the strategically right places to get the best signal possible with least exposure to the heat (sun etc).

So, my travel setup includes a mini travel router (remember, even if you use a cell phone as usb modem you still need to take care about TTL to hide the fact that you are tethering and mini OpenWRT router takes care about it), my cell phone, and either MOFI or WE826 (which I got just recently and now playing with it, thinking about some mods like installing a 5V USB fan on the top since the modem easily reaches 60 degrees Celsius while ambient temp is about 20 degrees C.)

[Prvt.N00b]

Anyone knows why i'm getting this now?

Capture.PNG

I used to be able see all the configurations available for CA.

Thanks.

[Didneywhorl]

Might be a tower issue. Keep an eye on it over the next week.

[Prvt.N00b]

If I run AT!GSTATUS I can see my modem is showing 2 bands available, but why if I run AT!LTECA? I now get this error, like if CA is not event present anymore in my MODEM.

GSTATUS.PNG

LTECA.PNG

Thanks.

[Prvt.N00b]

Although the command AT1LTECA? is showing me some error messages, today the modem worked fine.

Aggregated.PNG

[Prvt.N00b]

I fixed this problem by doing a Modem Firmware update using the sierra wireless support page.

[Didneywhorl]

I fixed this problem by doing a Modem Firmware update using the sierra wireless support page.

That's interesting. I wonder what might've changed to require the firmware update. Sierra also has Tmobile specific and approved firmware now too, for the EM7565.