Crest Factor Calculator

The crest factor of a waveform is given by the ratio of the peak to RMS amplitude level

Enter

  • Peak amplitude
  • Root-mean-square Amplitude

	

		

Formula

CF = Vpeak/VRMS

Example Calculation

If the peak value is 1V and RMS value is 0.707, then the Crest factor is 1.414 or 3 dB (using the volt to dB calculator). These are the values for a sine wave [1].

The crest factor for an OFDM waveform is quite a bit higher at 4 or 12 dB.

References

[1] Crest factor on Wikipedia