A frequency management plan that allocates distinct and different frequency bands that are dedicated to either transmit or receive operations may support duplex operations, in which transmission and reception may occur simultaneously, with the restriction that they operate in separate and distinct frequency bands, in which spectral separation may be ensured by imposing a minimum band gap between adjacent edges of either band. Even when distinct transmit and receive bands are utilized, however, it may be necessary to impose further restrictions by way of a duplex spacing. The example duplex spacing imposes a minimum frequency separation between an uplink reception fUL 203 and downlink transmission fDL 204 operations. According to the illustrative example, the duplex spacing is greater than the band gap, further restricting available frequencies for sub-band tuning.
Frequency division duplex (FDD) operation is standardized for mobile cellular communications according to “3rd Generation Partnership Project; Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA); User Equipment (UE) radio transmission and reception,” 3GPP TS 36.101, v15.18.0 (2022 March). The example standard discloses an LTE Bands & Frequencies that support FDD operation. By way of example, LTE band number 1, includes an uplink band defined between 1850-1910 MHz and a downlink band defined between 1930-1990 MHz. The bandwidths are 60 MHz in either band, with a specified band gap of 20 MHz and a specified duplex spacing of 80 MHz. Each of the specified LTE bands may support permissible combinations of channel bandwidths, e.g., 1.4 MHz, 3 MHZ, 5 MHz, 10 MHz, 15 MHz and 20 MHz, with each having a corresponding number of resource blocks, e.g., 6, 15, 25, 50, 75 and 100 according to the example channel bandwidths, respectively.