A base station is arranged for performing channel coding and link adaptation. The base station comprises one or more processors and physical layer circuitry arranged to decode symbols received from a user station to determine an error rate, the symbols received through a plurality of antennas, receive signaling from the user station, the signaling including channel quality information for channel resources of an orthogonal frequency division multiplexed (OFDM) channel, select a modulation and coding rate for transmission of symbols to the user station based at least in part on the error rate, and transmit a transmit power control command to the user station, the transmit power control command based at least in part on a downlink path loss estimate. The base station may also transmit additional transmit power control commands to the user station based on the error rate of subsequently decoded symbols. The transmit power control command may be selected for channel resources that are allocated to the user station, the channel resources comprising a group of subcarriers having an initially selected modulation and coding rate.