You will need Certified Professional Installer (CPI) credentials in order to activate your Celona Access Points (AP) and request for their access to CBRS spectrum via the Spectrum Access System (SAS) services used by FCC in the United States.
In order to add CPI information to your sites configured within the Celona Orchestrator, a Certified Professional Installer (CPI) must be added to your account. CPI credentials are used to attest that AP deployment parameters (coordinates, antenna parameters, etc) are correct.
CPI credentials can be registered under your existing Celona Orchestrator user account or a separate user account specifically for the CPI. To create a new account, proceed with these instructions. Otherwise, skip to Adding CPI Credentials below.
Creating a New CPI User
To add your installer's user details in Celona Orchestrator, navigate to Admin Settings > Users.
On the Users page, click Add User to continue.
Add the CPI's contact information and select Installer as the Role. Click Add and Celona Orchestrator will send an email to the CPI inviting them to create an account.
Adding CPI Credentials
Once the CPI has created a password and logged in, they must add their CPI ID and certificate to their profile. Click the Account icon (top-right) and select Profile.
In the CPI Certificate Information card, press Add and follow the instructions.
With CPI information added to Celona Orchestrator, proceed to configure your Celona APs.
Celona AP Parameter Configuration
Select Access Points from the left hand menu and select the AP you want to configure.
The screenshot above shows the AP Details before the configuration has been completed. In the Antennas card, click Add Parameters to add installation parameters.
For an indoor AP, only latitude and longitude data are required. Outdoor APs require additional data, including:
antenna model used,
azimuth and downtilt (in degrees).
To comply with FCC regulations, the CPI is responsible for adding and verifying the accuracy of information related to the AP installation at your site.
Once all of the data is entered, check the box for CPI compliance and press Save. Repeat this process for each Celona AP deployed.
If you have a large number of APs to provision, installation parameters can be entered using the Celona API. To arrange access, please email support@celona.io.
CPI data for ALL access points must be added before a site can be brought up. This is because Celona's CBRS Domain Proxy requests spectrum for the APs it manages as a group to facilitate coordination via our Self-Organizing Network algorithm.
About Spectrum Grants
Once the APs are provisioned, Celona Orchestrator will begin the automated process of acquiring your spectrum grants from SAS. You can track the status of your SAS grants from the Access Points page of the Orchestrator. If an AP shows its status as Provisioned, it is connected to Orchestrator but awaiting a grant to start broadcasting. As soon as the grant is received and the radio is “live”, the AP status in the Orchestrator will change to Up.
As APs come up, our self-organizing network (SON) algorithms automate the process of frequency assignment and TX power configuration for each AP, ensuring your users and devices experience seamless handover across your coverage areas.
The Domain Proxy service running on the Celona Edge interfaces with the SAS on behalf of all Celona APs at a site. This service sends periodic heartbeat keep-alive requests to SAS for each AP's grant to utilize the CBRS spectrum.
AP operations and the Domain Proxy service are decoupled on purpose to ensure that we maintain the state of the AP even if the AP is out of service momentarily. This allows the Domain Proxy service on the Celona Edge to retain existing grants with SAS service by continuing to keep the periodic heartbeat.
During the heartbeats to the SAS service, the SAS provider (e.g., Google) will ensure 99.999% availability, with Celona cloud receiving live reporting of its status as part of the system integration. If the Domain Proxy on the Celona Edge loses connectivity to the SAS service for more than 240 seconds, as per FCC regulation, spectrum grants to the Celona APs will be suspended until the connection to the SAS service can be re-established from the Celona Edge.
The AP operational state as reported within Celona Orchestrator will capture any issues during the SAS process: Registration, Spectrum Acquisition & Spectrum Grant Termination. You may subscribe to the AP state change monitoring API from Celona Orchestrator (contact support@celona.io for access) to be alerted when AP operational state changes due to SAS related errors.
To check on the status of your new site, click the Celona logo (top-left) to navigate to the main dashboard, displaying the status of all sites, physical assets and connected devices.
Select your new site from the dropdown to view the site-specific status of your Celona APs and Edge Clusters. All up? Great, let’s connect some devices.
In this next article in the series, we will show you how to onboard CBRS capable devices onto your Celona network for connectivity.