of the physically transmitted high-frequency signal rate is called chip rate, which also is the pulse rate of the equivalent base band signal. However, in spread spectrum systems, the term symbol may also be used at a higher layer and refer to one information bit, or a block of information bits that are modulated using for example conventional QAM modulation, before the CDMA spreading code is applied. Using the latter definition, the symbol rate is equal to or lower than the bit rate. Relationship to bit error rate The disadvantage of conveying many bits per symbol is that the receiver has to distinguish many signal levels or symbols from each other, which may be difficult and cause bit errors in case of a poor phone line that suffers from low signal-to-noise ratio. In that case, a modem or network adapter may automatically choose a slower and more robust modulation scheme or line code, using fewer bits per symbol, in view to reduce the bit error rate. An optimal symbol set design takes into account channel bandwidth, desired information rate, noise characteristics of the channel and the receiver, and receiver and decoder complexity. Modulation Many data transmission systems operate by the modulation of a carrier signal. For example, in frequency-shift keying (FSK), the frequency of a tone is varied among a small, fixed set of possible values. In a synchronous data transmission system, the tone can only be changed from one frequency to another at regular and well-defined intervals. The presence of one particular frequency during one of these intervals constitutes a symbol. (The concept of symbols does not apply to asynchronous data transmission systems.) In a modulated system, the term modulation rate may be used synonymously with symbol rate. Binary modulation If the carrier signal has only two states, then only one bit of data (i.e., a 0 or 1) can be transmitted in each symbol. The bit rate is in this case equal to the symbol rate. For example, a binary FSK system would allow the carrier to have one of two frequencies, one representing a 0 and the other a 1. A more practical scheme is differential binary phase-shift keying, in which the carrier remains at the same frequency, but can be in one of two phases. During each symbol, the phase either remains the same, encoding a 0, or jumps by 180°, encoding a 1. Again, only