WiFi PHY Rates (MCS)
Pick standard, channel width, guard interval and spatial streams to get the PHY rate per MCS. PHY rate is the link ceiling, not real throughput.
PHY rate per MCS
| MCS | Modulation | Code | Mbps |
|---|
The highlighted row is the highest PHY rate for this combination.
How it is computed · 802.11 PHY formula
Formula PHY = (Nsd · Nbpscs · R · Nss) / Tsym
Nsd data subcarriers, by channel width. For
HT/VHT (3.2 µs symbol): 20→52, 40→108, 80→234, 160→468.
For HE/EHT (12.8 µs symbol): 20→234, 40→468, 80→980,
160→1960.
Nbpscs bits per subcarrier:
BPSK 1, QPSK 2, 16-QAM 4,
64-QAM 6, 256-QAM 8, 1024-QAM 10 (HE+),
4096-QAM 12 (EHT).
R code rate of the MCS (e.g. 5/6 for MCS9). Nss spatial streams (1–8).
Tsym symbol + GI. For HT/VHT:
3.2 + 0.8 = 4.0 µs (long) or 3.2 + 0.4 = 3.6 µs
(short). For HE/EHT: 12.8 + {0.8, 1.6, 3.2} =
13.6 / 14.4 / 16.0 µs.
The PHY rate is the link ceiling (physical-layer data rate), not usable throughput: MAC overhead, contention, preambles and retransmissions bring it down in practice.
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