Channel Capacity Calculator

This tool calculates the channel capacity according to the Shannon-Hartley theorem.

The capacity is expressed in terms of bits per second.

Enter:

  • Signal-to-Noise Ratio either as a linear or dB quantity.
  • Bandwidth in Hz/kHz/MHz/GHz

	

			

		

						

				

				

                

			

			
						

		

		











Formula





C = B*Log2(1 + S/N)





where,





    

  • C is the throughput in bits per second
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  • B is the bandwidth in Hz
    • 




  • S/N is the signal-to-noise ratio
    • 






Key Assumptions





The Shannon-Hartley formula makes the following assumptions:





    

  • The noise is white Gaussian. In other words it does not consider the effect of Fading or external interference which can cause additional signal degradation. 
    • 




  • The throughput in bit-per-second is an upper bound. It represents an ideal condition that can be achieved with an arbitrarily low error rate. 
    • 






Example Calculation





For 5 MHz of bandwidth and 10 dB Signal to noise ratio, the maximum throughput is 17.3 Mbps. Throughput increases with SNR. For instance at 15 dB SNR, the max data rate is 25.14 Mbps.





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