Performing carrier aggregation for high-powered wireless devices that may cause interference to other wireless devices includes determining that a wireless device attached to an access node is assigned to a high power class and capable of operating in a carrier aggregation mode, initiating the carrier aggregation mode for the wireless device, and instructing the access node to utilize a frequency-division-duplexing (FDD) carrier deployed by the access node as a primary carrier for the wireless device. A handover of the wireless device to the FDD carrier may be triggered by a threshold level of interference caused by uplink transmissions from the wireless device when operating in the high-powered transmission mode on a TDD carrier.