Abstract
Adaptive modulation communication systems have been popular nowadays. The tradeoff between the symbol error rate and the data rate resulting from the constellation option is crucial in adaptive modulation. In this paper, we propose a constellation subset selection (CSS) approach to seek this tradeoff and design novel efficient approximation algorithms to tackle the CSS problems. The new theorems and studies on the algorithmic and systematic aspects for the constellation subset selection are facilitated. Our attempt to cope with the CSS problems would be valuable for the future communication systems with adjustable constellation sets. ©2010 IEEE.