Analysis and performance measurement of adaptive modulation and coding

Wireless spectrum is considered a limited and valuable communications resource as it influences productivity, security and our daily lives. The usage of the wireless spectrum has been given much research focus due to its limited capacity. There is currently a large amount of white spaces and spectrum holes left unused. Therefore, researchers are motivated to invent methods to utilize the spectrum more efficiently and opportunistically. Adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) is a method which adapts its transmitting parameters according to the channel state and it is used in various modern wireless communications to maximize spectrum efficiency and minimize error rate. One of the driving strengths of AMC is the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) estimation and feedback channel for adaptation. Sudden time-varying channel degrading effects sometimes require the transmission link to react appropriately so it can minimize the Bit Error Rate (BER). Thus, the objective of this paper introduces an AMC scheme which utilizes a simple moments based SNR estimator and punctured convolutional coding for spectral and quality improvement for the wireless channel.