In today’s scenario mobile phones are not used only for messaging and talking, now we use mobiles also to access internet. For that we need higher data rates. Mobiles use wireless communication channel, which is very fast varying channel. To increase the data rate we have to utilize the full channel based on the channel condition. For that we have to estimate the channel condition and based on that we have to vary the data rate so that our communication system performance parameters (bit error rate, throughput) do not change beyond the accepted level. To increase the data rate we are also using the multi-carrier CDMA system in conjunction with the above described adaptive modulation. Adaptive modulation, in conjunction with MC-CDMA transmission system is very assuring way to increase data rate. In current scenario demand of very high data rates up to 100 Mbits/s may be achieved with this scheme. In this paper, adaptive modulation based M-ary QAM, M-PSK and M-ary CPM systems applied to a MC-CDMA system in Rayleigh fading channel environment have been investigated and BER performances of all these digital modulation schemes have been compared.