Abstract. An adaptive fixed-length differential chain coding (FL-DCC) scheme is proposed for the transmission of line graphics, which canbe re-configured as a lower rate, lower resolution or higher rate. higher resolution source codec. Compared to Differential Chain Coding (DCC), the proposed FL-DCC codec has a lower coding rate in both of its lower-and higher-rate operating modes, while maintaining a similar subjective graphical quality.The dual-rate re-configurable FL-DCC codec is embedded in a voice, video multimedia communicator system, which allocates the FL-DCC graphics packets Lo idle speech packets with the aid of the Packet Reservation Multiple Access (PRMA) multiplexer. In a bandwidth of 200 kHz, which is characteristic of the Pan-European GSM system, nine speech, video and graphics multimedia users can be accommodated using bandwidth efficient 16-level Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (16QAM) over benign ~nicrocellular channels.Under less favourable propagation conditions the more robust, but less bandwidth efficient 3QAM mode of operation can be invoked. In the diversity-aided and automatic repeat request (ARQ) assisted I6QAM mode of operation the multimedia user bandwidth becomes 22.2 kHz and the minimum required channel signal to noise ratio ( S N R ) over AWCN and Rayleigh channels is about 11 and 15 dB, respectively. The most salient system features are summarised in Table 2. Telewriting is a multimedia telecommunication service enabling the bandwidth-efficient transmission of handwritten text and line graphics through fixed and wireless communication networks [2, 41. Differential chain coding (DCC) has been successfully used for graphical communications over E-mail networks or teletext systems [I], where bit rate economy is achieved by exploiting the correlation between successive vectors. A plethora of further excellent treatises were contributed to the literature of chain coding by R. Prasad and his colleagues from Delft University [I, 51. In this contribution an intelligent re-configurable graphical communications scheme is contrived, which is embedded in a voice, video multimedia system context. In the proposed fixed-length differential chain coding (FL-DCC) scheme the number of bits used to quantise the differential vectors of the so-called coding ring is dynamically adjusted under system's control, in ordei to match the prevailing bitrate, graphical quality andlor channel quality constraints. Our efforts are in line with the European Research in Advanced Communications Equipment (RACE) project's Advanced Communications Technologies and Services (ACTS) programme [6] to define a flexible third generation standard, backwardly compatible with second generation systems, while providing more advanced future features. The adaptivity of the transceiver can be exploited in numerous ways on a more static or dynamic basis, but these algorithms form part of the higher-level functions of the classic sevenlayer architechture. This contribution will concentrate on the physical layer functions, establis...