Adaptive transmission with discrete code rates

This work examines an adaptive transmission system that supports a discrete set of code rates and continuously variable transmit power. Based on the concept of information outage, we maximize the system throughput over a slow fading channel. Properties of the throughput maximizing policies result in an iterative algorithm that yields good system designs. Numerical results show that in a Rayleigh fading channel, there is only a gap of 1 dB between the ergodic capacity and the throughput of a 2-rate adaptive transmission system when the throughput is less than 4 bits/sec/Hz.