Bitrates

Example configurations:

desired bitrate	sample rate	samples per symbol	modulator sensitivity h=1	h=0.5
50kbps	200k	4	0.8	n/a
50kbps	250k	5	0.62	n/a
50kbps	400k	8	0.4	n/a
50kbps	500k	10	0.4	n/a
50kbps	800k	16	0.2	n/a
50kbps	1000k	20	0.15	n/a
50kbps	1.6M	32	0.15	n/a

Modulator sensitivity is only concern for transmitter deviation. h is modulation index, the ratio of (FM) frequency deviation to bit rate.

Different combinations of sample rate and samples per symbol is given because different RF bandwidths may be desired, or radio hardware is only capable of certain sample rates. Yet the newer SDR hardware has more flexible PLL clocking and should be more capable than this table.

Because bit rate is fixed to sample rate, its critical to ensure that the desired clock rate is actually selected on hardware, especially with older hardware without PLL clocking.