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Concept Explainer · Radio Communications

Bandwidth vs. Data Rate

Why more Hertz doesn't automatically mean more bits per second.

It's tempting to treat "bandwidth" and "data rate" as the same thing measured in different units — after all, in casual speech "more bandwidth" usually just means "faster." In radio and communications engineering they are not the same quantity at all. Bandwidth is a frequency-domain measurement: how many Hertz of spectrum a signal occupies, or is allowed to occupy. Data rate is a completely different measurement: how many bits per second are actually delivered. A channel can have enormous bandwidth and still carry disappointing amounts of data — and a narrow channel can, under the right conditions, be pushed surprisingly hard. The relationship between the two is real, but it runs through two other quantities entirely: the channel's signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the spectral efficiency of the modulation scheme in use.