5G Small Cell Density Calculator

A network only satisfies its design goal if it clears both constraints simultaneously — enough cells to carry the total simultaneous-user traffic, and enough cells to physically blanket the coverage area with no gaps. If either count were undersized, the network would either choke on demand in a fully-covered area or leave dead zones even though it has spare capacity. Taking the maximum guarantees both requirements are met at once, which is why the code compares cellsByCapacity and cellsByCoverage and keeps whichever is larger.

It comes down to the cell radius table: mmWave (28/39 GHz) tops out at a 100-300m radius depending on environment, versus 200-800m for sub-6 GHz and up to several kilometers for low-band. Since coverage-based cell count scales with area divided by a cell's circular footprint (πr²), halving the radius roughly quadruples the number of cells needed to cover the same ground — mmWave's shorter propagation range at higher frequencies is the direct cause.

Inter-site distance estimates the typical spacing you'd use when laying out cell sites in a real network, derived from the coverage area divided evenly among the required cell count. The calculator takes the square root of area-per-cell and applies a 1.1 multiplier as a hexagonal-grid correction factor, since real cellular deployments tile coverage with overlapping hexagonal cells rather than non-overlapping circles, and the multiplier accounts for that geometric difference.

Only up to the point where the capacity constraint exceeds the coverage constraint. Simultaneous-user percentage feeds directly into total demand (via simultaneousUsers = totalUsers × pct/100), which drives cellsByCapacity — so increasing it raises capacity-based cell count linearly. But if coverage-based cell count is already the larger of the two, small increases in simultaneous-user percentage won't move the final required-cells output at all until capacity-based demand overtakes it.