the course of the propagation path referring back to equation 2 it can be seen that the effects of differences in the path loss l s can be offset holding all else constant by changing the value of eb no req the value eb no req depends on the error detection and correction techniques employed to protect the transmitted data the encoding rate refers to the ratio of the number of binary symbols output by the encoder to the number of bits input into the encoder in general the higher the encoding rate of the transmission system the greater the protection to the transmitted data and the lower the required signal to noise ratio of the signal eb no req thus in a first exemplary embodiment of the present invention the encoding rate for transmissions to subscriber stations is selected based on the distance between the subscriber station and the base station because communication systems are bandwidth limited the higher encoding rate employed results in lower data throughput of the system in equation 2 it can be seen that the effects of differences in the path loss l s can also be offset by changing the value of the transmission rate r the transmission rate r is given by the equation where r s is the number of symbols transmitted and m is the number of symbols in the modulation constellation thus if the distance between the base station.