Private LTE design in the order it is built: spectrum and licence route, TDD frame, link budget, cell range, coexistence with neighbours and cell identities.
The discipline
Private LTE gives a mine, port or industrial site its own cellular network, designed around the site’s traffic rather than a consumer market. In Australia the usual spectrum routes are an apparatus licence at 1800 MHz (Band 3) in regional and remote areas under RALI MS 34, or 3.4 GHz (Band 42) under a point to multipoint licence (RALI MS 50) or an area wide licence (RALI MS 47).
Industrial traffic pushes rather than pulls. Autonomous haulage telemetry, teleremote video and fixed cameras all send uplink, while the LTE TDD configurations were designed for consumer downloads. The uplink downlink configuration can change the uplink share by a factor of three, and the special subframe guard period puts a limit on cell radius that no link budget will show.
The link budget has its own traps. A cell edge terminal is scheduled a few resource blocks, not the whole carrier, so the uplink noise floor belongs to the allocation: computed over the full 20 MHz carrier instead of four resource blocks, it throws away 14 dB. Coverage then depends on the propagation model, and the honest answer is the spread across the models that apply to your deployment, not one figure.
The tools below follow the order a design is built, ending with the cell identities the configuration team needs.
The workflow
Convert EARFCN to frequency and back for every E-UTRA band in 3GPP TS 36.101, with an Australian licensing overlay sourced to the RALIs and instruments. A band with no held source reads not assessed, never available.
Do it withEARFCN Calculator with Australian Band Overlay Free Open the tool →Compare all seven uplink downlink configurations and eleven special subframes from TS 36.211, see the cell radius each guard period allows, and check the 3.4 GHz configuration section 39 of the Fixed Licence Determination 2025 can require.
Do it withLTE TDD Frame Configuration Planner Free Open the tool →Uplink and downlink are computed separately, with the uplink noise bandwidth set by the resource blocks allocated. A cell edge service target is converted to the required SINR through 3GPP TR 36.942, and the limiting direction is named rather than assumed.
Do it withLTE Link Budget & MAPL Calculator Free Open the tool →Run the maximum allowable path loss through ten propagation models at once, TR 38.901 rural, urban macro and street canyon plus a validated Okumura Hata kernel, and read planning bounds taken over the models comparable for your deployment, with hexagonal site counts.
Do it withLTE Cell Range & Coverage Estimator Free Open the tool →Combine the transmitter ACLR and the receiver ACS into ACIR per TR 36.942, report the receiver desensitisation and the exact isolation shortfall, and apply the Australian emission limits from RALI MS 47, the Fixed Licence Determination 2025 and the Schedule 2 boundary criterion.
Do it withLTE Coexistence & ACIR Calculator Free Open the tool →Plan physical cell IDs and PRACH root sequences to TS 36.211 around the cells already on air, using the eNB neighbour list, and hand the configuration team a CSV in TS 36.331 field names.
Do it withPCI & PRACH Root Sequence Planner Free Open the tool →Licence routes change as the ACMA remakes its instruments. Check the current instrument before applying.
The rest of the kit
From other disciplines
Further reading
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