Optimal design of adaptive coded modulation schemes for maximum average spectral efficiency

Adaptive coded modulation (ACM) is a promising tool for transmission in a fading environment. The main motivation for employing ACM schemes is to improve the spectral efficiency of wireless communications. In this paper, we present a method for optimizing the average spectral efficiency of an ACM system. One important result of this work is that only a small number of optimally designed codes is needed to yield throughput close to the Shannon limit.