Getting Started
Introduction
As connectivity becomes core infrastructure, enterprises are increasingly adopting private Long-Term Evolution (LTE) and Fifth Generation (5G) networks that are robust and secure enough to meet their operational requirements for coverage, capacity, mobility, reliability, and access control—capabilities that enterprise Wi-Fi was not designed to deliver at industrial scale.
GXC's Onyx™ platform provides a flexible, scalable, and secure foundation for private LTE and 5G deployments across a wide range of indoor and outdoor enterprise environments. It brings coverage, capacity, mobility, reliability, and access control together in a single, integrated system—providing the connectivity infrastructure that modern enterprises need.
What this Guide Covers
This guide provides a practical framework for designing Onyx-powered private cellular networks, guiding you from “I have a site and a use case” to a preliminary network design suitable for developing a quote and Bill of Materials (BoM).
Who This Guide Is For
This guide is intended for customer technical teams designing their own deployments and for GXC partners developing customer proposals.
What You'll Get
By the end of this guide, you'll have:
A radio plan — The number of radios required, the appropriate radio type, and their recommended placement.
A network design — The required infrastructure—Onyx Edge servers, fronthaul, backhaul, switches, and the overall deployment architecture.
A Bill of Materials (BoM) — The BoM that you can use to request a quote or build a customer proposal.
Onyx ROM AP Calculator
At each step, the guide walks you through the Onyx Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) AP Calculator—a live tool that turns your deployment requirements into design recommendations. This guide also explains the manual methods and reference data behind those results, enabling you to validate the recommendations and develop them into a complete preliminary design and BoM.
Figure: Onyx ROM AP Calculator Interface

What to Bring
Before you begin, gather the following information.
Each item maps directly to one of the ROM Calculator's three input panels.
Your Site
Size
Indoor/outdoor split
Terrain
Obstructions
Ceiling heights
Zones with different coverage needs
Site & Coverage
Deployment Type
Environment
Clutter Level
Total Site Area
Your Use Cases
Voice
Video
Industrial automation
Internet of Things (IoT)
Surveillance
Telemetry
Broadcast
Other operational applications
Capacity & Application
Primary Use Case
Latency Requirement
Your Devices
Types
Capabilities
Expected concurrency
Bandwidth needs
Capacity & Application
Downlink / User
Uplink / User
Site & Coverage
UL Device Class
Your Scale
Expected users/devices
Peak concurrency
Capacity & Application
Concurrent Devices
Device Mobility
Your Spectrum and Backhaul
CBRS
n77/n78 or other regional bands
Existing wired connectivity
Capacity & Application
Technology
Channel BW
Site & Coverage
Region
AP Power Class
Planning Parameters
Backhaul / Cabling
Your Design Preferences
How conservative your estimate should be
How much growth/overlap margin to plan for
Planning Parameters
Planning Stance
Overlap / Growth Buffer
Before you Begin
New to private cellular terminology or concepts?
GXC Glossary — Learn common private cellular and Onyx terminology.
Private 5G Spectrum and Regulations — Understand supported spectrum bands and regulatory considerations.
Introduction to GXC Onyx — Review the overall Onyx platform architecture and components.
Onyx Hardware — Learn about supported Onyx Edge gateways, Access Points (APs), antennas, and related hardware.
Security and Compliance — Review security features, compliance certifications, and applicable regulatory requirements.
Use Cases — Explore real-world customer deployments, including the 2025 Australian Grand Prix deployment.
Where this Guide is Going
Network design follows four steps, in this order:
Capacity → Coverage → Architecture → Accessories
Capacity sets a floor, Coverage sets a ceiling, Architecture resolves where you land between them, and Accessories completes the system.

Step 1 - Capacity
Capacity planning determines how much wireless throughput the deployment must support and how many cells are required to meet that demand.
Do this in the Calculator
In the Capacity & Application panel, set:
Technology — 4G / LTE or 5G NR
Channel BW — (Only for 5G NR) 20 / 40 / 100 MHz
Primary Use Case — The category that best represents the dominant application (General Enterprise / Voice & Data, IoT/Telemetry & Sensors, Video Surveillance & Broadcast, Logistics/AGVs & Automated Vehicles, Machine Vision & Real-time Control, AR/VR & High-bandwidth Immersive)
Latency Requirement — Not Sensitive / Moderate / <30 ms
(LTE delivers >50 ms; 5G NR delivers <30 ms)
Downlink / User — <3 / 3–50 / >50 Mbps
Uplink / User — <1 / 1–10 / >10 Mbps
Concurrent Devices — <25 / 25–100 / 100+
Device Mobility — Fixed / Mobile / Continuous
Figure: ROM Calculator - Capacity & Application Panel

The calculator uses these inputs to estimate traffic demand and determine the capacity-driven AP count.
In the Estimated APs panel, review:
Capacity estimate: n APs (DL needs X · UL needs Y) — The estimated AP count and the calculated downlink and uplink requirements. The larger of X and Y is your capacity-driven cell count, and the calculator identifies the binding direction, such as "UL-limited".
Figure: ROM Calculator - Estimated APs Panel

Technology Assessment — Indicates whether the selected technology is a good fit, with the reasoning behind the recommendation.
Figure: ROM Calculator - Technology Assessment Panel

Understanding the Methodology
The Calculator performs the capacity calculation automatically. This section explains the methodology so that you can validate the recommendation and adapt it when the deployment does not fit the Calculator's generic application categories.
The Calculator's built-in capacity estimate applies a 0.65 concurrency factor to the device count in your selected Concurrent Devices bucket before computing throughput demand — it never evaluates 100% of devices as simultaneously active.
The manual method below (Application Profile → Total Throughput Demand) does not apply this factor, because it uses your own per-application peak-concurrency figures directly — a number you've already defined as "simultaneously active during peak operating conditions." This is intentional as the manual method is more precise when you know your actual peak concurrency, while the Calculator's 0.65 factor is a generic estimate for when you don't.
Determine the Application Profile.
The application profile is an inventory of the devices and applications that will use the network.
For each device category, capture:
Application — What does the device or application do? Examples include Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) navigation, video surveillance, handheld scanning, voice, and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA).
Peak concurrent devices — How many devices of that type are expected to be simultaneously active during peak operating conditions?
Downlink requirement — How much data does the application receive?
Uplink requirement — How much data does the application transmit?
Latency requirement — How sensitive is the application to network delay?
Mobility — Is the device stationary, pedestrian, or vehicle-mounted?
Application Traffic Classes
Light
Voice, messaging, telemetry
100–300 kbps
Moderate
IoT, monitoring systems, standard video applications
500 kbps – 3 Mbps
Heavy
AR/VR, machine vision, real-time video analytics
10 Mbps or greater
ROM Calculator Bandwidth Tiers
The Calculator uses broader planning buckets than the application traffic ranges above. These DL and UL values are what the calculator maps to your Downlink/User and Uplink/User selections.
Light / Low
Voice, messaging, telemetry
2 Mbps
0.5 Mbps
Moderate
IoT, monitoring, standard video
20 Mbps
5 Mbps
Heavy / High
AR/VR, machine vision, real-time analytics
75 Mbps
25 Mbps
Calculate the Total Throughput Demand.
Calculate the aggregate throughput requirement for the defined peak operating condition. For each device category:
Sum the results across all device categories.
Calculate downlink and uplink independently because enterprise applications rarely generate equal traffic in both directions.
The result is the peak throughput requirement that the network must support during the defined peak operating condition.
Select the Technology and Architecture.
With the peak throughput requirement established, compare it against the capabilities of the Onyx LTE and 5G platforms.
Technology selection should consider: Peak downlink throughput, peak uplink throughput, application latency requirements, device capabilities, spectrum availability, MIMO capability, expected device concurrency, mobility requirements, capacity-driven cell count, deployment architecture, and future operational requirements.
Cell capacity is determined from the LTE or 5G SA TDD tables below (frame format × bandwidth × MIMO):
LTE or 5G?
In many deployments, technology selection needs to be made early because GXC Onyx LTE and 5G use distinct hardware platforms.
LTE vs 5G At a Glance
Latency Characteristics
Suitable for moderate-latency enterprise applications (>50 ms)
Supports lower-latency and real-time workloads (<30 ms)
Typical Use Cases
General enterprise connectivity, telemetry, IoT
Real-time analytics, robotics, machine vision, broadcast video
Estimated Peak AP Throughput
~40 Mbps @ 20 MHz (general baseline); ~105 Mbps/cell at 20 MHz for the default Config1 configuration (up to 96 RRC users) — see the table below for the full range by configuration
Up to 300+ Mbps with 4×4 MIMO @ 40 MHz, depending on deployment conditions
Channel BW options in calculator
Fixed (2×20 MHz CA reference)
20 / 40 / 100 MHz, selectable
LTE and 5G Hardware Considerations
GXC Onyx LTE and 5G use distinct hardware platforms. Selecting the appropriate technology is therefore an important early design decision.
If an existing LTE deployment later requires 5G capability, a supported 5G architecture may be available for specific configurations. This is not a standard LTE-to-5G migration model.
LTE Capacity
This section provides guidance for understanding LTE capacity on the Onyx platform.
5G Capacity
This section provides guidance for understanding 5G capacity on the Onyx platform.
