Techno-Economic Analysis on Spectrum Utilization Efficiency of 1900 MHz for 5G-Railways: A Case Study for Indonesia

The rail industry is transitioning from the Global System for Mobile Communications-Railway (GSM-R) to the Future Railway Mobile Communications System (FRMCS). Using advanced fifth-generation (5G) technology, FRMCS addresses the limitations of GSM-R and meets the requirements of modern railways. In this paper, we select the island of Java, which has the longest railway track in Indonesia, as the research area. We analyze the performance on spectrum utilization efficiency (SUE) of 1900 MHz for 5G-Railway in Indonesia. We determine the maximum allowable path loss (MAPL) to calculate the required number of base stations and evaluate the feasibility of investment considering the current business conditions of railway operators. We found that the efficiency of spectrum utilization increases as the physical size of the cell and the cluster size decreases. We also found that utilizing the 1900 MHz spectrum as a class license yields higher Net Present Value (NPV) and Internal Rate of Return (IRR) values, along with a shorter payback period. The results of this paper are expected to offer a reference for implementing FRMCS in Indonesia.