Spectral efficiency

Spectral efficiency, spectrum efficiency or bandwidth efficiency refers to the information rate that can be transmitted over a given bandwidth in a specific communication system. It is a measure of how efficiently a limited frequency spectrum is utilized by the physical layer protocol, and sometimes by the media access control (the channel access protocol). Spectral efficiency, spectrum efficiency or bandwidth efficiency refers to the information rate that can be transmitted over a given bandwidth in a specific communication system. It is a measure of how efficiently a limited frequency spectrum is utilized by the physical layer protocol, and sometimes by the media access control (the channel access protocol). The link spectral efficiency of a digital communication system is measured in bit/s/Hz, or, less frequently but unambiguously, in (bit/s)/Hz. It is the net bitrate (useful information rate excluding error-correcting codes) or maximum throughput divided by the bandwidth in hertz of a communication channel or a data link. Alternatively, the spectral efficiency may be measured in bit/symbol, which is equivalent to bits per channel use (bpcu), implying that the net bit rate is divided by the symbol rate (modulation rate) or line code pulse rate. Link spectral efficiency is typically used to analyse the efficiency of a digital modulation method or line code, sometimes in combination with a forward error correction (FEC) code and other physical layer overhead. In the latter case, a 'bit' refers to a user data bit; FEC overhead is always excluded. The modulation efficiency in bit/s is the gross bitrate (including any error-correcting code) divided by the bandwidth. An upper bound for the attainable modulation efficiency is given by the Nyquist rate or Hartley's law as follows: For a signaling alphabet with M alternative symbols, each symbol represents N = log2 M bits. N is the modulation efficiency measured in bit/symbol or bpcu. In the case of baseband transmission (line coding or pulse-amplitude modulation) with a baseband bandwidth (or upper cut-off frequency) B, the symbol rate can not exceed 2B symbols/s in view to avoid intersymbol interference. Thus, the spectral efficiency can not exceed 2N (bit/s)/Hz in the baseband transmission case. In the passband transmission case, a signal with passband bandwidth W can be converted to an equivalent baseband signal (using undersampling or a superheterodyne receiver), with upper cut-off frequency W/2. If double-sideband modulation schemes such as QAM, ASK, PSK or OFDM are used, this results in a maximum symbol rate of W symbols/s, and in that the modulation efficiency can not exceed N (bit/s)/Hz. If digital single-sideband modulation is used, the passband signal with bandwidth W corresponds to a baseband message signal with baseband bandwidth W, resulting in a maximum symbol rate of 2W and an attainable modulation efficiency of 2N (bit/s)/Hz. If a forward error correction code is used, the spectral efficiency is reduced from the uncoded modulation efficiency figure. An upper bound for the spectral efficiency possible without bit errors in a channel with a certain SNR, if ideal error coding and modulation is assumed, is given by the Shannon-Hartley theorem. Note that the goodput (the amount of application layer useful information) is normally lower than the maximum throughput used in the above calculations, because of packet retransmissions, higher protocol layer overhead, flow control, congestion avoidance, etc. On the other hand, a data compression scheme, such as the V.44 or V.42bis compression used in telephone modems, may however give higher goodput if the transferred data is not already efficiently compressed. The link spectral efficiency of a wireless telephony link may also be expressed as the maximum number of simultaneous calls over 1 MHz frequency spectrum in erlangs per megahertz, or E/MHz. This measure is also affected by the source coding (data compression) scheme. It may be applied to analog as well as digital transmission.