Systems and methods are provided for transmitting OFDM signals through a communication channel exhibiting frequency selective fading, such as an aeronautical 2-ray channel, using a signal modulation scheme at the transmitter that is selected based on a measurement of signal to distortion ratio (SDR) at the receiver. The SDR measurement at the receiver is used to generate an estimated best modulation scheme based on the real-time detection and measurement of SDR at the receiver, and provide feedback to the transmitter through a feedback channel of the newly selected modulation scheme. In certain configurations, the selected modulation scheme is one of multiple possible quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) schemes, which enables adaptation of the transmitted OFDM signal to optimize throughput based on distortion of individual tones of the OFDM signal received at the receiver.