Abstract
The role of adaptive modulation techniques in the wireless networks of the future is discussed. Adaptive modulation permits the good coded orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (COFDM) channels to be allocated more sophisticated modulation techniques to increase the data throughput, while poor channels can use basic modulation techniques. Adaptive modulation, which adapts the transmission scheme to current channel characteristics, is used to achieve robust and spectrally efficient communication over multipath fading channels. The results indicate that the dynamic switching of modulation format can enhance the system capacity per given bandwidth substantially without sacrificing the expected bit error rate (BER) performance.