Use a channel plan

You can review and implement a channel plan for your Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) network from the Google Spectrum Access System (SAS) Portal. The channel plan is optimized to minimize interference with another Citizens Broadband Radio Service Device (CBSD).

When to use a channel plan

You can use a channel plan to do the following:

Deploy new CBSDs.

You can add or upload the CBSD's parameters for your future deployment to the SAS Portal. The SAS Portal then recommends channels for every CBSD. These recommendations are based on each CBSD configuration, their frequency management groups, and deployments by other nearby operators.
Resolve interference.

As a first option to mitigate interference, you must review the SAS Portal's proposed channel plan. If the proposed plan doesn't meet your needs, contact SAS Support to explain your requirements and receive a solution.

Before you begin

For the channel plan recommendations to be useful, review the frequency management groups and make sure that they're accurate. To optimize channel allocations for minimal interference, SAS needs to know which devices can and can't interfere with each other.

All CBSD configurations in the SAS Portal, including those of unregistered CBSDs, are accounted for in the channel plan.

Review the channel plan

Go to the SAS Portal.
Click View deployments.
Select a deployment, and then click Open.
Click Table view.
On the Device table page, click Select columns.
Add the following columns to the table:
- Freq. plan: a diagram of future grants after the plan is implemented.
- Freq. plan EIRP: the EIRP for all grants after the plan is implemented.
- Freq. plan quality: the average channel quality score anticipated for the new grants after the plan is implemented.
- Freq. plan cohort: a group of CBSDs whose channel assignments need to be considered together to avoid interference issues.
Click Apply.
Optional: To download the plan as a CSV, click Frequency planning.

Optimize a cohort of the CBSDs to find new clean channels

If one of your CBSDs experiences interference, and there are no channels available with high quality scores, you can use the channel plan to find clean channels.

To optimize a group of CBSDs, implement the recommended channel plan for that cohort. For example, if some CBSDs must remain on a specific channel, you can remove them from the channel plan before you optimize the cohort. All other CBSDs then move to the suggested channels just before the next Coordinated Periodic Activities among SASs (CPAS).

The channel plan is designed for all CBSDs in a cohort to switch to the recommended channels. While the channel plan feature is in Preview, you might find that only certain CBSDs in the cohort need to change channels. For these rare scenarios, you can remove individual CBSDs when you optimize the cohort. If you find issues with your channel plan, we recommend that you verify the frequency management groups.

To optimize your channel plan, follow these steps:

After you review your channel plan, select the CBSD that you want to optimize or resolve interference for.
On the right of the CBSD page, click Unlock CBSD.
On the Coex tab, click Optimize cohort.
If some CBSDs must remain on a specific channel, clear them from the list of CBSDs in the selected cohort.
If a cohort has more than 1,000 CBSDs, select the CBSD to optimize the entire cohort.
Click Schedule planning. All changes take effect just before the next CPAS.

Tip: You can find the scheduled changes in the Pending changes section of the Coex tab.

Determine how the channel plan affects a single CBSD

Go to the SAS Portal.
Click View deployments.
Select the deployment, and then click Open.
Select a CBSD.
On the right, select the Coex tab.
In the Frequency planning section, review the current and future channels and channel quality.

Tip: If a current channel is also one of the frequency plan's future channels, move the mouse over the channel to find the current and future channel quality.