5G NR Throughput Calculator
Compute peak PDSCH/PUSCH throughput per 3GPP TS 38.306 — with FR1/FR2 N_PRB tables, MIMO layers, modulation order and code rate.
The 5G NR peak throughput calculator implements the exact formula from 3GPP TS 38.306 §4.1.2. Given your bandwidth, subcarrier spacing, number of MIMO layers, modulation order and code rate, it returns the theoretical peak data rate in Mbps and Gbps. This is the headline number you see in 5G brochures — a typical commercial 5G carrier at 100 MHz / 30 kHz SCS / 4 layers / 256QAM / 0.92 code rate reaches roughly 2.3 Gbps DL per carrier before overhead is removed. Use this tool to size backhaul, validate marketing claims, or sanity-check a throughput KPI against the physical ceiling.
At 100 MHz with 30 kHz SCS, 4 layers, Q_m = 8, and R = 0.9258, you get 2337.0 Mbps peak DL.
How It Works
The peak data rate per component carrier is:
data_rate (Mbps) = 10^-6 × v_Layers × Q_m × f × R_max
× (N_PRB_BW,μ × 12 / T_s^μ)
× (1 − OH)- v_Layers — number of MIMO layers (1, 2, 4, or 8).
- Q_m — modulation order: 2 (QPSK), 4 (16QAM), 6 (64QAM), 8 (256QAM), 10 (1024QAM).
- f — scaling factor (1, 0.8, 0.75 or 0.4); we assume 1.
- R_max — max code rate. 948/1024 ≈ 0.9258 is the 3GPP ceiling.
- N_PRB — PRBs available for the configured bandwidth and SCS (from TS 38.101 tables).
- T_s^μ — OFDM symbol duration for numerology μ.
- OH — overhead: 0.14 FR1 DL, 0.18 FR1 UL, 0.18 FR2 DL, 0.10 FR2 UL.
The tool plugs in the 3GPP N_PRB table for your (BW, SCS) pair — e.g. 273 PRBs at 100 MHz / 30 kHz, 66 PRBs at 100 MHz / 120 kHz FR2. The symbol period is 10⁻³ / (14 × 2^μ) seconds (14 symbols per slot, 2^μ slots per subframe).
3GPP References
- • TS 38.306 §4.1.2 — Peak data rate formula
- • TS 38.101-1 Table 5.3.2-1 — FR1 transmission bandwidth configuration (N_PRB)
- • TS 38.101-2 Table 5.3.2-1 — FR2 transmission bandwidth configuration (N_PRB)
- • TS 38.214 — PDSCH / PUSCH physical layer procedures
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