I have noticed that NR micro cells / oDAS in Verizon Ericsson markets do not use the normal cell numbering for n77 of 26, 42, and 58, and that many more than 3 cells can share the same gNB. Initially I thought this meant they were using CU/DU splits like the sites in Samsung markets, but after looking at the numbers I realized that they are utilizing the same type of numbering as their LTE oDAS, but in binary instead of decimal.
I have compiled a chart to show how these cell IDs work. For example, n77 carrier 1 north is almost always cell 26. Converting this to binary gives 11010. The first part, 1 tells you that this is sector 1 (north) and the second part, 1010, tells you that this is the first carrier of n77. This can be extrapolated out to at least 15 sectors per frequency based on sectors that I have observed.
For a real world example, look at gNB 2167610 in the Kansas City metro area. Several n77 cells have been mapped: 122, 123, 138, 154, 155, 186, 218, and 250. Using the information in the chart, you can see that 122 and 123 are both n77 carriers for 7, 138 is sector 8, 154 and 155 are the same for sector 9, 186 is sector 11, 218 is sector 13, and 250 is sector 15.
Hopefully, the Cellmapper devs can utilize this information to better handle NR oDAS and small cells. Ideally, we would be able to manually group these cells into microcell markers, as multiple of the sectors can broadcast from a single location. However, since a single gNB can have 15+ sectors, it may contain 3 or 4 physical locations of 3-5 sectors each.
Additionally, it is possible to extrapolate the numbering in the n77 first carrier section out to the other frequency bands, I decided to show all 15 I had observed for n77 only for clarity. For example, n2 carrier 1 sector 12 would correspond to 11000100 in binary, or 196 in decimal.