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Coverage metrics for private 4G

Indoor and outdoor CBRS based 4G coverage characteristics

Team Celona avatar
Written by Team Celona
Updated over a week ago

In this article notes down expected / average coverage metrics of a single CBRS 4G radio. Across the board, we are assuming that a smartphone or a tablet maintains 4G wireless connection down to reference signal receive power (RSRP) of -110dBm and minimum wireless data link rate of 1.6Mbps.

Indoor AP with integrated antennas

  • Designing for coverage: Estimated 25K SQFT per AP, each deployed at every 125ft within the indoor floor plan enabling handover of client devices between APs.

  • Designing for capacity: Estimated 10K SQFT per AP, each deployed at every 80ft.

  • Note that the radios on a CBRS 4G indoor AP can utilize transmit power of up to 30dBm EIRP per 10MHz as per CBRS specifications, and that's what's assumed in the numbers noted above. Depending on the real-time assignments from self-organizing network (SON) function for channel and power assignments across a network of APs, coverage characteristics of an individual AP will change over time as the SON algorithm aims to maximize overall network capacity.

Outdoor AP with omni-directional external antennas

  • Designing for coverage: Estimated 1M SQFT per AP, each deployed at every 800ft.

  • Designing for capacity: Estimated 300K SQFT per AP, each deployed at every 440ft

  • Note that the radios on a CBRS 4G outdoor AP can utilize transmit power of up to 47dBm EIRP per 10MHz as per CBRS specifications, and that's what's assumed in the numbers noted above. Similar to indoors, SON algorithms will aim to maximize overall capacity across all APs in the network on an ongoing basis.

Outdoor AP with directional external antennas

  • For 33- to 120-degree antennas, range of connectivity will be between 2500ft and 5000ft for smartphones, tablets and other smart devices. For CPE devices with a specialized higher-gain antenna, the range can go up to 12000ft.

  • Note that multiple CBRS 4G outdoor APs can be installed at a single cell site in order to provide 360-degree coverage, with handover of client devices between the APs managed by the infrastructure. Needless to say, additional requirements within a CBRS 4G network might require greater density of outdoor APs, each delivering adjusted range metrics to maximize overall capacity.


If you are also looking for a similar set of practical information on the upload and download throughput metrics for a CBRS 4G access point, make sure to read the next article in our series.

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