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70 SMT007 MAGAZINE I NOVEMBER 2024 ducted for an outdoor CBRS radio installed at a height of 30 along with an omni- directional antenna with 13 dbi gain. e RF modeling indicated that the cellular cover- age from the radio would far exceed the retail property boundaries (black polygon) and the received signal strength (RSRP) across the property would be greater than -90 dBm (green areas) for robust cellular connectivity throughout the property from the single cellu- lar radio. In contrast, the red circles in Figure 5 show that 10 Wi-Fi APs would be required to achieve the same coverage as a single outdoor CBRS cellular radio. Furthermore, all 10 APs would need to be wired for power as well as for Cat 6 ethernet data cabling. As a rule of thumb, the coverage area for a 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi outdoor AP is 100,000 square feet, whereas the coverage area for an outdoor CBRS LTE radio is 1 mil- lion square feet. e coverage advantage of the CBRS LTE radio also translates to a significant cost advan- tage. e private cellular network infrastruc- ture deployment at the customer was accom- plished for a cost of ~$50,000 and included a three-year license for the radios. e cost to deploy 10 Wi-Fi APs is shown in Table 2 and estimated to be ~$175,000. e cost advantage of private cellular over Wi-Fi for this deploy- ment was ~$125,000 resulting mainly from the savings in labor and power and data cable wir- ing of the 10 Wi-Fi APs. e measured coverage by way of received signal strength throughout the retail facil- ity as well as indoors is shown in Figure 6. While the initial plan was to install one indoor CBRS radio each for coverage inside the show- room (Location 20) and the secondary build- ing (Location 22), the table in Figure 6 shows that actual measured signal strength inside the buildings (-97 and -101 dBm, respectively), while lower that outdoors, was robust enough that an indoor CBRS radio was not necessary. Figure 5: Wi-Fi APs required to provide the same coverage as a single outdoor CBRS radio.