AbstractTo cope with the increasing demands for the land mobile communication with a limited frequency band, it is necessary to improve the spectral efficiency beyond the present state. QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) is one of the effective means for this purpose. When QAM is applied to land mobile communication, however, a great distortion is produced in the envelope and the phase due to fading fluctuation. Because of this property, few discussions have been made on the application of QAM to land mobile communication. This paper proposes the following system for such an application. The fading distortion is measured from the periodically inserted known frame symbol. By interpolating the obtained time‐series, the fading distortion for all symbols is estimated. Then the distortion is compensated. The performance when the proposed method is applied to 16QAM is examined by computer simulation. It is seen as a result that the fading distortion can be compensated with high accuracy, making 16QAM applicable to land mobile communication