Plan Your Network
Introduction
As connectivity becomes core infrastructure, enterprises are increasingly adopting private Long-Term Evolution (LTE) and Fifth Generation (5G) networks resilient 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?
Introduction to GXC Onyx: Review the overall Onyx platform architecture and components.
Is Onyx Right for You?: Check that private cellular fits the problem before you size a network for it.
GXC Glossary: Learn common private cellular and Onyx terminology.
Private 5G Spectrum and Regulations: Understand supported spectrum bands and regulatory considerations.
Security and Compliance: Review security features, compliance certifications, and applicable regulatory requirements.
Onyx Hardware: Learn about supported Onyx Edge gateways, Access Points (APs), antennas, and related hardware.
Use Case Workflows: See the network requirements that real deployments produce, workflow by workflow.
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.
Work through the four steps in order. Each one carries a number into the next, so skipping ahead produces a design that does not hold together.
Getting a Full Estimate
The BoM components in Step 4 Accessories cover the equipment required for a given architecture, but several accessory quantities: antenna and cable counts, FHM requirements, RU/gNodeB configuration, and outdoor-unit accessories: depend heavily on the specific deployment's physical layout and are not produced by the calculator. Adding these manually without confirming they apply to your design can significantly overstate the estimate.
For a validated BoM and a formal quote, contact GXC Sales with the outputs from your ROM Calculator session. GXC Sales will confirm the accessory and configuration details: such as tenant/antenna counts, FHM requirements, and RU or outdoor-unit accessories: that apply to your specific deployment.
Contact GXC Sales
To convert the preliminary BoM into a priced, deployment-ready quote, contact GXC Sales. Sales involvement is especially useful when your design includes an outdoor unit, since outdoor accessories, tenant/antenna counts, and other site-dependent components are best confirmed before final pricing.
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