conditions prevailing between the base station and the ue are such that there is a single dominant path this kind of path condition arises for example in open countryside as opposed to urban environments as is evident from fig1 an amcs method embodying the present invention provides a significant improvement in performance over both conventional methods over a very wide range of downlink channel qualities e g from u2212 6 db to 16 db by contrast the second conventional method has a significant dip in performance under the single path condition for downlink channel qualities in the range from about u2212 10 db to 4 db this dip is thought to arise from a bunching of the threshold values under the single dominant path condition 0084 fig1 shows the corresponding results for the three methods again under single path conditions but with the ue moving at a medium speed of 60 kph in this case also it is evident that the amcs method embodying the present invention avoids the undesirable dip in the second conventional method 0085 fig1 shows some results obtained under two equal gain path conditions for the three different methods and also shows for comparison purposes the performance of the first conventional method and a method embodying the present invention for.